SASG: It’s nice to see you all.

Question: How was the first meeting with the new President?

 

Well, I know the President of course very well and we have met him on many occasions both socially and at more formal meetings in his office in his capacity as President of his party. Look, it’s been a great opportunity to catch up with him. First of all, we here at the United Nations congratulate President Anastasiades on his election, it was a decisive victory for him. He has huge challenges on the economic front to deal with and that’s not our business, but suffice it to say that we are very sympathetic to the challenges that he, and the people of Cyprus more broadly, have to face of an economic nature. As far as the Cyprus issue is concerned, well we’ve had a good initial discussion with him and I’ll be meeting with Mr Eroglu this afternoon and then next week I’ll be in New York seeing the Secretary-General and some of the Security Council members and other people within the UN system. So, I think we’re getting an increasingly clearer picture of how President Anastasiades wants to take the process forward. But understandably, and we feel very sympathetic about this, he has huge economic challenges to face in the short term and he has to deal with those issues. But as you know he is very committed to a solution to the Cyprus problem and we’ll be doing what we can to help him deal with those issues.

 

Question: Did you give to the President the paper that you had prepared with your team on the convergences?

 

SASG: We haven’t given him any papers today- we just had an initial meeting. But obviously we will make sure that we are able to provide the President with any information he wants, there’s no problems there. We’re happy to give him whatever information he wants- there’s no science in that, no mystery in that. We’re not guardians of great secrets as far as the negotiations are concerned. If he’s interested in what convergences have been achieved in the past, then we’re happy to facilitate them.

 

Question: When will you get back to the job in Cyprus?

 

SASG: Well, I’m here now and I’ll be coming back next month. At the moment I think, understandably, the new President and his team want to concentrate on the economy and they have to, I mean it’s not realistic to think they should be doing anything else right this week. But I’ll be coming back in April and we’ll have a look at the situation then and have further discussions. In the meantime I would have had talks with the Turkish Cypriots, Mr Eroglu in particular, but also in New York. And I’ll be talking with the Greek government and the Turkish government as well. So there’ll be a body of work to do by the time I get back here in April and I’ll have done a fair bit of preparation and we’ll see where we’re at in April. Beyond that I won’t make any predictions about my travel arrangements.

Question: Can you tell us please how the UN intends to move the process forward- is it premature to say now or can you give us any indication of where you want to take this, and when?

 

SASG: I’ll say this about it: we need to take the process forward but we need to do in a timely and appropriate way. And it’s my judgement, and I think this judgement is right, that Cypriots need for the moment to conclude their negotiations, particularly with the President and the Troika, and those economic issues are bigger economic issues than most countries face, and those economic issues need to be dealt with and that leaves us with plenty of time to do a great deal of preparation for trying to get the process going again. But we need time to make preparations ourselves. And so we’re not putting any particular timetable out. These are the priorities: negotiations with the Troika for the President; preparations on our part; discussions with a range of different people on our part- and then we can see how to put it together as the year progresses.

 

Thank you.

 

 

Question: How was the meeting?

SASG: It was an excellent meeting. I saw Mr. Anastasiades this morning and so I was able to have a preliminary talk with him, my first meeting with him since he’s been elected, and I felt it was a very constructive meeting. I’ve been able now to meet Mr. Eroglu, exchanged some views about the changes that have taken place. There’s obviously a period now where Mr. Anastasiades has to focus on his negotiations with the Troika, which is a huge issue for Greek Cypriots and I think anybody would be sympathetic to the challenges they face right at the moment in those negotiations.

 

Nevertheless, I’ll be back in April and in the meantime I would have gone to New York and met with the Secretary-General and other senior officials of the United Nations and members of the Security Council. In April, I look forward to taking this process a step further.

 

Question: So you are saying that the talks won’t start in the near future because of the economic conditions in the south?

 

SASG: Well they won't start in the next two weeks, I won’t be here. I can’t be back here till later in April. I don’t want to go into timetables today, at the beginning of Mr. Anastasiades term. I mean he’s only just been elected a few days ago. He’s inherited from day one the huge challenge of finishing the negotiations with the Troika. He needs to do that, I think, fairly soon. But I can tell you this: he’s clearly very committed to dealing with the Cyprus issue. So there’s no problem there. And we’ll be working on how to make the engagement with the leaders, once they meet, how to make them as successful as we possibly can.

 

Thank you.

The UN Secretary General’s Special Advisor (SASG), Alexander Downer, completed his most recent visit to Cyprus on 17 January 2013. This was an occasion for the SASG to hold his last official meeting with Greek Cypriot leader Dimitris Christophias prior to the presidential elections on February 17 in the Republic of Cyprus.

The SASG also met Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu. Both expressed their wish to see renewed developments on the Cyprus issue in the hopes of achieving a settlement.

Mr. Downer stated he would return to the island for new contacts after the presidential elections and also announced his intention to brief the Security Council on the Cyprus problem following his next visit during the month of March when he intends to update on the Secretary General’s Good Offices mission in Cyprus.

The SASG also hosted both of the Leaders’ representatives to discuss issues related to the work of the Technical Committees. The committees have been working on various projects of common interest. Mr. Downer witnessed the implementation of one such project: the fire emergency preparedness exercise organized by the Technical Committee on Crisis Management.