NICOSIA – Insistence by Turkey that the Greek-Cypriot government and world accept the occupied northern third of the island as a separate state won’t work, the spokesman for President Nicos Anastasiades said.

Marios Pelekanos was responding to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that the idea of reunifying the island divided by unlawful Turkish invasions and occupation in 1974 is the only path Turkey and Turkish-Cypriot will accept.

The occupied territory is isolated in the world but despite that, hardline Turkish-Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar is pressing for the two-state idea that the United Nations also has ignored and which Anastasiades dismissed out of hand.

“Negotiations are possible between equals, otherwise they do not make sense,” he said. “We have experienced this for 54 years. We do not have another 50 years to waste,” Cavusoglu said of the failed negotiations history.

He said that the European Union, of which the legitimate Greek-Cypriot government is a member, must bend and has “to acknowledge the will of Turkish-Cypriots” who make up only about 20 percent of the island’s poulation.

He said that Turkey will never abandon the Turkish-Cypriots – Turkey keeps

In Lapithos, Cavusoglu expressed solidarity towards Turkish Cypriots, saying that the Turkish Republic and the Turkish people never abandoned them. “Therefore we will overcome everything together. The important thing is to dismantle the plans that have been set up in Cyprus,” he also said, reported The Cyprus Mail.