Procedural wrangle over at Cyprus talks

Serdar Denktas, the deputy prime minister and foreign minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC), told reporters in Buergenstock, where proximity and unofficial talks at a technical level were continuing Thursday between the four participating countries, that the Turkish Cypriot team had been notified by the United Nations that the four-way meeting was fixed for late Friday night.

U.N. Cyprus envoy Alvaro de Soto, however, told a news conference later on Thursday that no formal four-party meeting had been fixed but that the four parties present at the Buergenstock resort where the talks have been held since Wednesday were "eating, dining and sleeping" in the same building and frequently getting together.

He said the four sides could come together at dinner, as they did on Wednesday night.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, his Greek counterpart, Petros Molyviatis, and Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos left Buergenstock Thursday to attend a European Union summit. They are scheduled to return to the snow-covered Swiss resort Friday afternoon.

Serdar Denktas, son of veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktas, who has boycotted the talks in Switzerland, told reporters earlier that agreement had been reached on Turkey and Greece entering the negotiations on Friday. He said Gul and Greek Foreign Minister Molyviatis would begin talks after returning from the EU summit in Brussels late today.

"There is no formal meeting before Friday," he said. "To be frank, we’ve lost time. For the last two days there haven’t been any developments, except for meetings amongst ourselves."

The overall talks, expected to end by March 31, are based on a U.N. plan envisaging a united Cyprus made up of two loosely confederated ethnic states.

The United Nations hopes Ankara and Athens can nudge Greek and Turkish Cypriots into a deal so that a united Cyprus enters the European Union on May 1.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has invited Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the Swiss negotiations on Sunday, when he is also expected to attend. According to Greek and Turkish sources, Annan is expected to arrive in Buergenstock Saturday afternoon.

The expected arrival of Karamanlis and Erdogan on March 29 as well as U.N. Secretary-General Annan on Saturday is anticipated to give fresh impetus to the talks that have yielded no results so far.

Under the United Nations’ tight timetable, the four-way talks were to begin on Wednesday, but the two sides on Cyprus and their respective "motherlands" have so far locked horns over many of the same issues that have stalled progress in the talks over the past decades.

If Greek and Turkish involvement fails to secure a deal, the rival Cypriot leaders have agreed that Annan will "fill in the blanks" to produce a draft accord that will be voted on in separate referendums on April 20.

The parties are racing against time to find a settlement to the island’s decades-long division. The internationally recognized Greek Cypriot side will enter the EU on May 1, with or without a deal.

The lack of a settlement could further isolate Turkish Cypriots and undermine Muslim Turkey’s chances of furthering its own aspirations to join the EU.

U.N. envoy Alvaro de Soto rated the chances of an agreement by next week as "better than even."

"We are coming to the point, we hope, of convergence. The Cypriots have never in the past three years been so close to actually coming to a settlement, and we hope they will take advantage of this opportunity," de Soto said in a statement.

But Turkish and Turkish Cypriot diplomats accused Greece of failing to put its back behind the effort. A senior Turkish Cypriot source, however, accused Greek Cypriots of not being "cooperative" and said the chance to get a deal before Annan steps in at the end of the month was "almost nil."

According to Turkish sources, the Greek and the Greek Cypriot sides have been trying to impose the idea of holding Cyprus talks between the two sides of the island instead of holding a four-party conference with the participation of Turkey and Greece.

Expressing uneasiness with the failure of U.N. envoy de Soto to give the sides even a draft agenda of the talks, diplomatic sources said de Soto apparently preferred unofficial contacts and proximity talks rather than official negotiation sessions in order to avert a possible confrontation between the four parties.

Turkish diplomatic sources said although they were not officially notified about what had happened so that four-way talks could not be held on Wednesday, they had the impression that the Greek and the Greek Cypriot sides were trying to impose the idea of holding Cyprus talks between the two sides of the island instead of holding a four-party conference with the participation of Turkey and Greece.

The same sources noted that they had launched a series of initiatives both in the United Nations and with the Greek delegation to prevent such an attempt. The Greek government doesn’t recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and was reluctant to sit at the same table, fearing such a move would provide them with "legitimacy," the sources said. The decision to start the four-way talks Friday evening, therefore, was in a way a success of the Turkish and Turkish Cypriot teams at Buergenstock, they said.

Meanwhile, Greek and Turkish diplomats concluded a separate session on parallel direct security talks to cut their troops stationed in Cyprus.