Former minister accuses Anastasiades of offering Turkey two-state solution
Costas Themistocleous, who served as agriculture minister between 1998 and 2003 under former president Glafcos Clerides, on Tuesday criticised former president Nicos Anastasiades’ recent intervention on the Cyprus problem, accusing him of offering Turkey a two-state solution.
He said Anastasiades “continues to be under the illusion that by constantly accusing people of adopting Turkish narratives on the Cyprus problem, he will be relieved of the enormous responsibilities he personally bears” for the current lack of negotiations towards a solution.
“Anastasiades, behind the backs of the United Nations, behind the back of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a secret meeting with [then Turkish foreign minister Mevlut] Cavusoglu, said roughly the following: a federal solution is not feasible. I am going back to Cyprus, I believe that I will be re-elected, and we will meet again to discuss on another basis,” he said.
That basis, he added, “was division, in line with [former Turkish Cypriot leader] Rauf Denktash’s old demand for two states”.
“This is how the talks ended in 2017, which is why the other side still invokes it today and considers Anastasiades to be the godfather of the two-state solution,” he said, referring to the collapse of negotiations in Crans Montana that year.
His comments came after Anastasiades had attacked the leadership of his own party, Disy, for “adopting Turkey’s narratives” on the Cyprus problem and for “distancing” itself from the government he led between 2013 and 2023, in a letter which was leaked to the media on Monday.
He said he had attached to the letter “a documented article, based on the minutes kept by the United Nations, in the hope of understanding the reasons for the collapse of the most promising attempt to resolve the Cyprus problem at Crans Montana”.
The talks at Crans Montana were the most recent formal negotiations to be held with the aim of solving the Cyprus problem and were abruptly halted in July 2017 and never resumed.
News agency Reuters at the time cited a source which said that Guterres had “finally called a halt at 2am after a session marred by yelling and drama”.
Since then, many who were party to the talks have said it was Anastasiades who left the negotiation table, with some reports in the intervening years suggesting that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was involved in “sabotaging” the talks.
Anastasiades has denied that he is to blame for the collapse of talks at Crans Montana, instead saying earlier this year that Turkey’s refusal to accept an abandonment of the Treaty of Guarantee, which allows Cyprus’ three guarantor powers to use force to intervene on the island should its legal order be disrupted.
“I will not comment at this stage on the unsubstantiated allegations that the conference was interrupted because the former president allegedly abandoned the negotiations, which is why the talks collapsed,” he said, adding that he would “address this matter later”.
Last month, former Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat had said that it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who had convinced Anastasiades to collapse the negotiations.
“The reason Anastasiades flipped the table at Crans Montana is because Netanyahu said, ‘are you crazy? Why would you include Turkish Cypriots in the government? Why would you make them partners? Now, when you are governing Cyprus and representing all of Cyprus globally, what would the Turkish Cypriots be doing there?’,” he recounted.
He said he had been told this “by Greek Cypriots”, before going on to point out that relations between the Republic of Cyprus and the State of Israel are “improving”.