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Saturday, June 11, 2016

The UN Negotiator Liking & Retweeting a Sworn Antibizonalist

Snapshot #1
UN Cyprus tweeted on June 8th 2016 about Lisa Buttenheim's departure (will we ever know the real reasons?) (1st snapshot). I replied with a tweet that read "Good people. Condemned to star in the Bizonality Sisyphean Tragedy. Cherchez le Brit" (2nd snapshot). And to my surprise Espen Barth Eide, of all people, both liked and retweeted (3rd snapshot). An honest mistake? Or perhaps not? I immediately captured the screen as I suspected it would not stay up for long. Indeed, minutes later it was gone!

But what (part of the tweet) could have prompted Mr Eide to both like and retweet? My tweet contained three messages.

  1. Firstly, an acknowledgment that people tasked to carry the Cyprus negotiations are in general good people and competent diplomats.
  2. Secondly, my long-held belief that the bizonal framework is like a Sisyphean tragedy. In other words, bizonality guarantees that a solution can never be found.
  3. Thirdly, paraphrasing the French 'cherchez la femme' phrase, meaning 'no matter what the problem may be, there is a woman at the root', my 'chercez le Brit' points to the elephant in the negotiations, the British. The British caused the problem, the British maintain it, the British forced 1960 apartheid on the Cypriots in 1960, the British devised bizonality to add geographic segregation on top, the British (and their American overlords of course) have every reason to preserve the stalemate and afford the Muslim minority a veto right. If democracy were ever to be allowed in Cyprus, then one of the first decisions of the Cypriots would be to throw out the "sovereign" military bases. And they can't have that, can they now?     
I leave it up to you to decide which part or parts of the message prompted the chief negotiator of the Cyprus issue, a successful career diplomat to LIKE & RETWEET the tweet of a well-known, sworn antibizonalist, even if for very briefly. My take, if interested, is that his "mistake" spoke volumes of intent. For the simple reason that the tweet was clearly too 'blasphemous' to like and retweet by way of an honest mistake. Eide was venting frustration & acknowledging the impossibility of the task at hand, the only way good a good diplomat could while restrained in a bizonal straitjacket. By minor "mistake".      

Snapshot #2

Snapshot #3

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Turkey's Kurds & Cyprus' tCypriots

As either unitary state or federation solutions are discussed as replacements to Cyprus' 1960 and Turkey's 1923 unworkable constitutions, should we abide by "if a right is a right too many for Turkey's Kurdish community (circa 23% of population) then that right is a right too many for Cyprus' tCypriot community too (circa 15%), and vice versa." Is the adoption of this fair logic the catalyst to securing just solutions for both UN countries.