CYPRUS: SCENESETTER FOR CODEL BERMAN

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NICOSIA 000256

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE, H. H PLEASE PASS TO CONGRESSMAN
BERMAN.

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: OREP PREL PGOV UNFICYP CY TU
SUBJECT: CYPRUS: SCENESETTER FOR CODEL BERMAN

REF: A. NICOSIA 223

B. STATE 28633


1. (SBU) Embassy Nicosia looks forward to welcoming you to
Cyprus, an island whose political complexity and strategic
value belie its small size. We have crafted an intensive
program including calls on President Demetris Christofias and
other high ranking Republic of Cyprus (RoC) officials, a
meeting with Turkish Cypriot (T/C) leader Mehmet Ali Talat,
and a visit to UN headquarters in the Buffer Zone (BZ) that
divides this island. We hope your visit will underscore for
you the difficulties inherent in any reunification effort,
but also the contributions an undivided island could make to
U.S. interests. The entire Embassy Nicosia team looks
forward to your visit and will endeavor to make it both
productive and enjoyable.

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Short Stay, Meaty Schedule
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2. (SBU) Your visit commences at the Embassy, where we will
provide you a Cyprus snapshot and discuss Mission goals.
Next up is a call on RoC Foreign Minister Markos Kyprianou,
son of late President Spyros Kyprianou. He is likely to
raise his desire for more high-level, political discussions
between our countries, something to which your visit and his
recent meeting with the Secretary of State naturally
contribute. After the Foreign Ministry, you will proceed to
UN Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) headquarters for a meeting with
UNFICYP chief Taye-Brook Zerihoun, a long-time UN diplomat of
Ethiopian descent.


3. (SBU) A courtesy call on Turkish Cypriot leader Talat
follows (President Christofias is unavailable later in the
day.) The most pro-solution mainstream leader in the north,
Talat, unlike hard-line T/C politicians such as the legendary
Rauf Denktash, truly wants to reunify the island under a
bi-zonal, bi-communal federation, the preferred governance
model since UN-brokered settlement negotiations commenced in
the late 1970s. He is feeling huge pressures from the right
and the nationalists for not having delivered a deal,
however, and his party is trailing badly in polls for the
April 19 "parliamentary" elections.


4. (SBU) Your program concludes with a visit to RoC
President Christofias. While personally engaging and always
courteous with visiting U.S. officials, the president's
ideology is far-left. Christofias hails from the Communist
AKEL party, Cyprus's largest, was educated in Russia, and is
very fond of the former USSR. Since winning election in
February 2008, he has begun a shift in Cyprus's foreign
policy direction. Cyprus has returned to a more non-aligned
foreign policy approach, entailing warming relations with
Tehran, Havana, Caracas, and Moscow. Regarding the Cyprus
Problem, Christofias, like Talat, favors a reunified, federal
Cyprus. The two men share a long history in leftist,
opposition politics and by all accounts like each other,
although the rigor of the negotiations and the need to defend
respective sides' interests naturally are causing some
friction between them.

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The Cyprus Problem
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5. (SBU) Taxi drivers, barbers, shop clerks -- to say
nothing of politicians -- have strong opinions on the Cyprus
Problem, the de facto division of the island since the
violent conflict of 1974 (or 1963, in Turkish Cypriot
reckoning.) All will share their thoughts at the drop of a
hat, and I can think of no country where a single issue so
dominates. For every compelling point made in one community,
there exists a plausible counterpoint in the other. To
illustrate, Greek Cypriots call Turkey's 1974 military
intervention an invasion and continuing occupation of
sovereign Republic of Cyprus (RoC) territory, while Turkish
Cypriots classify it a peace operation undertaken to prevent
their community's annihilation at the hands of the much
more-numerous G/Cs.


6. (SBU) U.S. involvement to mitigate damage from the
conflict and effect the island's eventual reunification began
almost before the smoke cleared in August 1974. From feeding
and housing refugees early on, our efforts morphed into
infrastructure construction and later, fostering bi-communal
cooperation. While the United Nations has directed most

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Cyprus Problem settlement efforts, all have featured some
level of U.S. backing. The last, known colloquially as the
Annan Plan after then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan,
culminated in April 2004 simultaneous referendums that saw
two of three T/C voters cast "YES' ballots but three of four
Greek Cypriots vote "NO." In his subsequent report to the
Security Council -- which never became "official," owing to a
rare Russian veto -- Annan urged the international community
to end the economic, social, and cultural isolation of
Turkish Cypriots, since they had cast their lot for
reunification. U.S. policy since 2004 has been that, while
we have not and do not recognize the breakaway "Turkish
Republic of Northern Cyprus," we do maintain close contacts
with leaders of the T/C community, attempt to engage them on
matters of common concern, and are working to improve the
north's economic performance in the hopes of reducing the
cost and difficulty of a final Cyprus settlement.


7. (SBU) Every day that passes makes cracking this nut that
much harder. And solve the Cyprus Problem we must: the
continuing division incurs great costs, both real and
political, for the United States. Our contributions to the
43 year-old UN peacekeeping mission run well in the millions.
Cyprus Problem fallout exacerbates tensions between NATO
allies Greece and Turkey, complicates Ankara's accession to
the EU, and undercuts EU-NATO cooperation in hotspots like
Afghanistan and the Balkans. Finally, the two sides' refusal
to date to cooperate on law enforcement and security matters
hinders our counter-terrorism and non-proliferation efforts
in the Eastern Mediterranean. In short, it's not just the
island's problem, and we have serious and significant reasons
to want to see it solved.

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Current Negotiations: (Baby) Steps in the Right Direction
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8. (SBU) For two-plus years after the failed referendums in
2004, leaders in both communities alternated silent
treatments with petty sniping, and hopes grew dim for
restarting the talks. Prospects improved in July 2006 when a
visiting UN official secured a framework agreement between
Talat and then-RoC President Tassos Papadopoulos, however.
The deal reiterated the sides' commitment to a bi-zonal,
bi-communal federation while committing them to enact
confidence-building measures (CBMs) and initiate processes in
which committees and working groups would form to tackle
day-to-day life issues and final settlement matters.
However, the so-called July 8 process was never to get off
the ground.


9. (SBU) A settlement breakthrough occurred in February

2008. Surprising most political observers, Papadopoulos
failed to advance to the second round of voting in his
re-election attempt, a contest eventually won by AKEL
Secretary General and House of Representatives President
Christofias. Within weeks of taking office, Christofias made
good on his promise to resuscitate the working
groups/technical committees process and put former Foreign
Minister George Iacovou in charge of the G/C negotiating
team; Talat responded by nominating UC Berkley-educated Ozdil
Nami. Once the negotiators and their experts began talks,
they were able to prepare the ground for a series of meetings
between Christofias and Talat, in which the leaders
stipulated the overarching political goal: to forge a
bizonal, bi-communal federal Cyprus featuring politically
equal constituent states, a single international personality,
sovereignty, and citizenship. At their fourth meeting in
late July, they committed to starting full-fledged settlement
negotiations under UN auspices in early September.


10. (SBU) The UN Secretary General responded to the leaders'
call by naming former Australian Foreign Minister and
long-time MP Alexander Downer his Special Adviser on Cyprus.
Downer leads the UN's "Good Offices" mission, technically
separate from UNFICYP since it belongs to the Department of
Political Affairs (DPA),not to Peacekeeping Operations
(DPO). Downer and Zerihoun, the latter being dual-hatted as
the Good Offices deputy, enjoy a productive relationship.
Zerihoun officiates at many meetings of the leaders and
negotiators, since Downer's part-time UN contract means he
usually is on-island only 10 days per month.

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Modalities Different This Time
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11. (SBU) The 2004 Annan Plan and earlier settlement efforts
featured high-profile UN mediators and similarly prominent
special envoys from the countries most involved (the U.S. and
Britain, mainly). Greek Cypriots pushed hard and won a
change this go-round. Citing "asphyxiating timetables" and
"unwanted intervention" from the international community as
the reason G/Cs overwhelmingly voted no, Christofias,
following predecessor Papadopoulos's lead, demanded that the
current negotiations be "by the Cypriots, for the Cypriots."
Talat accepted.


12. (SBU) Under this framework, Good Offices personnel,
Downer included, "facilitate" the talks; they don't
officiate, mediate, or arbitrate. The UN team does not even
act as a secretariat, and the sides themselves spend
significant time and effort determining what constitutes the
official record. As expected under these loose procedures,
full-fledged negotiations covering the six core issues --
governance, property, EU matters, economy, territory, and
security/guarantees -- has proven slow. The leaders spent
four months debating governance issues, for example, and
remain at odds over fundamental matters: the assignment of
competencies between the federal and constituent state
governments, and the model of the federal executive. Gaps on
property are significant as well. Finally, despite fanfare
this summer over agreed CBMs, the sides have proven unable to
put even one into operation (we expect Christofias and Talat
to announce a breakthrough on two CBMs at their April 9
meeting, however.)


13. (SBU) There will be a short break in negotiations
following your visit, to accommodate "parliamentary"
elections in the north. Once talks re-start in late
April/early May, Special Adviser Downer hopes to skim through
the two as-yet untouched chapters, territory and
security/guarantees, then move into "Phase II," a study of
areas of medium convergence that require bridging solutions.
He does not expect major format/framework changes until
"Phase III," when Christofias and Talat hopefully will engage
in real give-and-take in an attempt to reach a deal. Downer
remains optimistic that the sides can reach a tentative
agreement by the end of the year, with a fourth phase -- the
leaders lobbying their respective communities to approve it
via parallel referendums -- some time in early 2010.

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A Final Word On Atmospherics
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14. (SBU) Your stop in Cyprus falls just one week after the
President visited Ankara and Istanbul and just three weeks
after the Secretary of State paid a similar visit there. In
an area where zero-sum thinking regrettably remains
commonplace, Greek and Greek Cypriot pundits characterized
the high-level Washington attention on Turkey as a defeat for
Greece and Cyprus. The Secretary and Kyprianou conducted a
bilateral meeting on the margins of the U.S.-EU summit in
Prague, during which she invited him to Washington as soon as
their schedules permitted. A Talat visit to DC also remains
a possibility.
Urbancic