Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on Friday lamented a “lack of results” in efforts to resolve the issue of long tailbacks and congestions at the Ayios Dhometios crossing point in western Nicosia during a meeting with United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin.
Speaking to journalists after the meeting, he said he had told President Nikos Christodoulides at their meeting last month that “problems could be significantly alleviated” at the crossing point “if the three cabins on the southern side were staffed permanently”.
However, he said, the police cabins on the southern side of the crossing point are “still not working efficiently”.
He said that his undersecretary Mehmet Dana had “contacted his interlocutors in the south this morning and re-registered this request”, adding that if this request was heeded, “the traffic problem would not be completely resolved but would be significantly eased”.
“If the call we asked for 20 days ago had been made, these problems would not be experienced in this way today,” he said.
In addition to the matter of the existing Ayios Dhometios crossing point, he said that he and Holguin had also discussed potential new crossing points in the eastern Nicosia suburb of Mia Milia, in the village of Louroujina, between Nicosia and Larnaca, and in the town of Athienou.
The former two of those three potential crossing points had been proposed by his predecessor Ersin Tatar, while the latter was proposed by Christodoulides.
Erhurman added that “negotiations are ongoing to resolve the issues related to the crossing points”, with the European Union having announced on Thursday that it is financing efforts to widen the crossing point at Athienou.
“The Ayios Dhometios issue could be easily resolved. If the Turkish Cypriot side’s findings were taken into account, there would be no problems in the area,” he said.
He also expressed concern that “if action cannot even be taken on a simple issue, how can there be progress on other topics?”.
“My wish is for the necessary action to be taken swiftly to facilitate daily life and to prevent both communities from suffering for hours on end. I spoke to Holguin about the lack of results despite the passage of time,” he said.
To this end, he said he hopes a planned tripartite meeting with Holguin and Christodoulides in the coming days will “ensure progress” on the matter of the crossing points, as well as other issues.
Away from the issue of crossing points, Erhurman said that he and Holguin had also discussed the matter of a potential bicommunal solar farm to be built in the buffer zone, initially announced by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at the enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem which took place in the Swiss city of Geneva in March.
Plans for such a solar farm have been on ice since April, with differences between the island’s two sides’ positions on how the Turkish Cypriots’ allocation of electricity should be transferred to them proving irreconcilable thus far.
Erhurman also presented to Holguin his four-point plan for negotiations to solve the Cyprus problem to restart in earnest.
Those four points, sometimes referred to as “preconditions” – a term Erhurman resents – foresee that the Greek Cypriot side accept political equality, time-limit negotiations, and preserve all past agreements, and that the UN guarantee that embargoes placed on the Turkish Cypriots be lifted if the Greek Cypriot side leaves the negotiating table again.
Holguin, meanwhile, described her meeting with Erhurman as “a very good conversation and, I think, a useful conversation”.
She also said she is “glad” that she will host a tripartite meeting with Erhurman and Christodoulides next week, adding, “I am pushing for it to be a very productive and very concrete conversation”.
Additionally, she made reference to the retreat she held with the bicommunal technical committee on youth in the Jordanian capital, Amman, last month, describing it as a “very productive retreat”.
“I think this is what we want; a new atmosphere on the island, and I hope the people realise that they have to support this effort of the leaders, and the leaders have to deliver. This is my message, and I hope we have a very good and productive week,” she said.
Following her meeting with Erhurman, Holguin will meet Christodoulides on Saturday morning, before the tripartite meeting is expected to take place on December 11.
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