Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis: We Achieved Enosis!

The meeting held at the residence of the Greek Cypriot ambassador just a few meters away from the Green Line dividing the two communities, has been first in the history of Cyprus; for the first time a Greek Prime Minister met Turkish Cypriot opposition leaders. Ruling National Unity Party and Democrat Party turned down the invitation while all representatives of the opposition accepted it. The National Justice Party and the Right-wing Reformist Initiative Party YAP were not invited. All Greek Cypriot parties were present in the meeting, with Social Salvation Party TKP’s Huseyin Angolemli, Alpay Durukan from the Patriotic Union Movement YBH, Izzet Izcan from the United Cyprus Party BKP and Mehmet Suleymanoglu from the Cyprus socialist Party KSP. Greek Cypriot parties talked very little at the meeting, while Turkish Cypriot parties demanded the two seats kept vacant for Turkish Cypriots at EP, Turkish language to be included into the EU languages, and using the Annan Plan as the framework for a solution.
At their presentation, Turkish Cypriot politicians recalled that the 1960 Constitution of Cyprus described Turkish as the official language of the Cyprus Republic.

Simitis turned down the requests for Turkish language and two seats at EP, before a settlement.

At the meeting the opposition representatives of the Turkish Cypriot side said that the Social and Economic Initiatives soon to be disclosed by Greek Cypriots were in fact, “Minority Rights” and they were not consulted during their preparation. Simitis said that they did not regard Turks as a minority.

TRNC President Denktas had reacted at the meeting saying that “Simitis invited party leaders as the opposition parties of Cyprus under occupation, rather than the opposition of TRNC. It needs digestion to attend it.”
After the meeting, CTP leader Mehmet Ali Talat said that he was optimistic for the settlement of the Cyprus issue.
Asked by a reporter, who was in power in TRNC, Talat said “The people!”
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Simitis spoke his own mind: Denktas
April 21— The President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Rauf Denktas, said that Simitis expressed his own inner mind by saying that Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration had achieved Enosis, the long sought after union between the two.
“He uttered a thought embedded in his conscience,” Denktaş said of Simitis’s comments, made on the weekend days after the Greek Cypriot administration had signed an accession treaty with the European Union.
The Turkish Cypriot President said that Enosis and the EU were different and that as long as Turkey was a guarantor in Cyprus that real Enosis, the uniting of Greece and Cyprus, never would happen.