US to announce its Northern Cyprus plan next week

WASHINGTON (AA) – At first stage, direct economic aid to the TRNC, steps on direct flights to Northern Cyprus and close diplomatic dialogue are among these measures, sources said.

While TRNC Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat was continuing his meetings in Washington, officials of relevant U.S. institutions held a meeting on package of measures in Washington yesterday to ease problems of Northern Cyprus, sources said and added that U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones and White House, U.S. Treasury Department and U.S. aid organization USAID officials attended the meeting and they decided on measures that the United States would announce.

The United States is getting prepared to start to announce the package of measures next week and the plan would be put into practice stage by stage as it requires different legal and technical processes, sources said.

U.S. officials said that there should be U.S. Congress’ approval especially regarding financial aid.

The United States is planning to transfer a part of the 400 million U.S. dollars of aid which it promised to give to Cyprus in case of solution to Northern Cyprus, although there was not a solution, as Turkish Cypriots voted "yes" to solution. Officials said there would not be a need for U.S. Congress’ approval for some financial aid of small amount.

As the biggest shareholder of the IMF, the United States would seek opportunities of both IMF and World Bank aid to Northern Cyprus. IMF aid would include technical issues like restructuring of banking sector while World Bank might lend loans to finance specific projects, sources added.