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General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
NEW YORK – Again issuing a plea rejected a number of times, Cypriot President Nicos Christodoulides said he would sit down to negotiate reunifying the island divided by Turkish invasions in 1974 that seized the northern third.
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he said he was ready to instantly resume talks that broke off in 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana when Nicos Anastasiades was Cyprus’ leader.
“We cannot change geography. It is an opportunity, not a curse. Turkey and Cyprus will always remain neighbors,” he said, adding: “I adamantly believe we can carve a new path, one of peace, cooperation and collaboration,” reported Reuters.
Turkish-Cypriots have occupied the isolated side for 50 years and their hardliner leader Ersin Tatar has rejected reunification, instead demanding the UN recognize the occupied territory, and dismissed earlier calls by Christodoulides to talk.
Despite that, Christodoulides said that, “I am committed and I am ready to sit at the negotiating table today. Not tomorrow. Today,” although all previous attempts at diplomacy have utterly failed with virtually no progress.
The last round of talks collapsed when then Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a 35,000-strong Turkish army would never leave and demanded the right of further military intervention.
The Greek-Cypriot legitimate government that’s a member of the European Union wants a bizonal, bicommunal federation and to stick to a UN framework although Secretary-General Antonio Guterres hasn’t been able to get a resolution either.
Erdogan told the world leaders though that the federation model “has now completely lost its validity,” because there are “two separate states and two separate peoples,” wanting permanent partition and recognition.
“The sovereign equality and equal international status of the Turkish-Cypriots, which are their inherent rights, should be reaffirmed, and the isolation should now come to an end,” he also said.
But Turkey won’t recognize the Greek-Cypriot government and bars its ships and planes while still hoping to join the EU, a process that began in 2005 and has worsened under Erdogan’s autocratic rule.
He later told Guterres that a meeting between the sides under the auspices of the U.N. to discuss models other than a federation could help, his office said, an idea that the Greek-Cypriot side won’t even consider, nor the UN.
