LEFT-WING CHALLENGER PROMISES CLOSE RELATIONS WITH

C O N F I D E N T I A L NICOSIA 000094 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/06/2023 TAGS: PGOV PREL UNFICYP CY TU SUBJECT: LEFT-WING CHALLENGER PROMISES CLOSE RELATIONS WITH U.S. REF: NICOSIA 91 Classified By: Ambassador Ronald Schlicher, Reasons 1.4 (b),(d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: AKEL (Communist) Secretary General and presidential candidate Dimitris Christofias promises his administration will seek and value close relations with the United States. Only with U.S. and UK input and support could Cyprus reunify, he told the Ambassador February 5; while relations with Washington had improved in recent years, official ties with London were strained. Turning to the campaign, Christofias, running a close second in most polls, voiced optimism over his February 17 prospects. No longer did Cypriots fear a government from the left, he asserted. From the left, but not leftist -- his team would pursue concrete results, not follow strict ideology. Regarding the Cyprus Problem, Christofias repeated his assertion that, of the three principal candidates, only he possessed strong links to Turkish Cypriot parties and individuals, vital to reaching agreement or even re-starting serious negotiations. END SUMMARY. -------------- Up with America, Down with Britain? -------------- ¶2. (C) On Stop 2 on our final tour of party headquarters before the February 17 presidential first round (Reftel),the Ambassador February 5 visited Dimitris Christofias. The AKEL Secretary General was as warm and friendly as usual, but SIPDIS unexpectedly less guarded. In response to the Ambassador's primary points -- that the United States favored no candidate and was intent on working closely with whoever emerged victorious, and that the Cypriots and international community needed to move ahead quickly after the elections -- Christofias asserted that his administration aimed to bolster bilateral ties between Cyprus and the U.S., "the world superpower." Relations had improved since their post-Annan Plan trough, and he intended to ensure the trend continued upward. A Cyprus settlement depended on the contributions and support of the United States and Great Britain, Christofias reckoned, mandating that Nicosia pay close attention to these relationships. But while dealings with Washington trended upward, the opposite unfortunately rang true with London. ¶3. (C) Close commercial, educational, cultural, and blood connections should ensure that official Cyprus and Britain worked well together, Christofias thought. Yet Her Majesty's Government, or the Foreign Office at least, remained mired in the mid-50s, the period of Cyprus's anti-colonial struggle. "They can't get past (Greek Cypriot guerilla band) EOKA," Christofias fretted, arguing that current UK leaders had inherited their predecessors' prejudices against G/C interests. The British ought to reconsider their current policies that seemed to lead to a two-state settlement, he reasoned, since "partition means the abrogation of the founding treaties...and the end of their Sovereign Bases." In hopes of changing UK policy, AKEL had urged its sympathizers living in Britain to vote Labor as a bloc and thereby increase G/C influence within the governing party. -------------- Campaign Advances, but Unhappy with Tone -------------- ¶4. (C) Published polling shows Christofias in a virtual first-round tie with incumbent President Tassos Papadopoulos, and edging him in the projected run-off. AKEL's private surveys showed similar outcomes, Christofias revealed, as did anecdotal evidence from the trenches. "Twenty years ago, it was inconceivable that an AKEL candidate could win the presidency," he declared. "But we've succeeded in overcoming these prejudices against the left." Troubling, however, was the negative environment surrounding the campaign. Christofias insisted that February 24 should not be a day to celebrate victory, but to get to work on solving the Cyprus Problem. To do so, he would need the support of each of the vanquished candidates and their parties. ¶5. (C) Portraits of Vladimir Lenin and Che Guevara decorate the walls of Christofias's Communist-shabby office. "But forget the pictures you see here," he stressed to the Ambassador. "I am a humanist above all, and want only the best for Cypriots." The policies he favored were by no means extreme, evidenced by his competitors incorporating them into their own platforms. And Christofias rightly realized that the only manner of increasing social benefits without breaking the bank lay in growing the economy. "I want to create wealth," he avowed. -------------- Must Define What We Want -------------- ¶6. (C) The discussion turned toward the Cyprus Problem, or more specifically, to the current negotiations impasse. "Cypriots must determine what exactly we want," Christofias contended. A unitary state was most democratic, but was clearly unacceptable to Turkish Cypriots. Two states meant disaster. That left only a bi-zonal, bi-communal federal solution framework. Both the incoming RoC president and T/C leader Mehmet Ali Talat needed to restate their commitment to this model, he maintained, which amounted to a huge G/C concession to the far-smaller T/C community. ¶7. (C) Only an AKEL-led government could deliver a viable solution, he believed. The party long had fought chauvinism and nationalism, on which the centrist and right-wing parties feasted, and respected Turkish Cypriots as equal citizens of the Republic. Under Christofias, the July 8 process would be reinvigorated, the goal being a restart of substantive negotiations soonest. The international community would have a significant role to play both on the island and in Ankara, where it needed to pressure the Turks to deal in good faith. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶8. (C) In seeking these meetings with party leaders and presidential candidates, we aimed to dispel persistent rumors that we favored one candidate over another. Most of the scuttlebutt concerned Christofias -- specifically, that the Embassy abhored the idea of a Communist in power, and would support the one candidate who might defeat him: Tassos Papadopoulos. While the tributes to Latin American and Russian revolutionaries papering his walls do give us pause, Christofias has taken pains to emphasize that an AKEL-led government would be more inclusive and less ideologically rigid than the party itself; hence his promise in the first debate to appoint a finance minister "of broad acceptance," and his commitment to us to seek closer bilateral relations. We're not so blind to believe Christofias will become a pro-American free trader overnight, of course. But nor are we ringing alarm bells that Cyprus verges on becoming a Mediterranean Cuba come March 1. SCHLICHER