Cyprus

Lord Lester of Herne Hill Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, once again, after two years, I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate the Cyprus issue on the Floor of the House. Before I start, I have apologies from the noble Lords, Lord Hannay, Lord Sharkey and Lord Maginnis, and from the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, for being unable to participate in the debate. The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, informed me that she had to be abroad in Paris, but I know that my noble friend Lady Goldie will be a more than capable replacement.

First, I draw your Lordships’ attention to my membership of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus—TRNC. During my visit there in July, I met in particular the President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, so I had a good opportunity to form a judgment on how the peace talks are going. Sadly, I came away with the impression—I hope that I will be proved wrong—that major problems still remain which will prevent any settlement before the end of 2016, and may well make a settlement in 2017 speculative. The one important hope is that the good personal relationship between the two Presidents will finally achieve a result and prove me wrong.

I think it is useful to start with my July meetings. First, I saw President Akinci. He began with these opening remarks:

“I tell you very frankly that this is the last chance of our generation for a settlement”.

He then went on to discuss the major issues, which he set out as bizonality, political equality—although he did not say what this meant except in terms of a right to citizenship of essentially one Turkish Cypriot for four Greek Cypriots—and the need for security guarantees. Importantly, he said that the discussions had to be completed by the end of 2016 because, first, there will be a change of Secretary-General at the UN next year, which will cause delay as the new person will have to get to grips with the issue. Secondly, there will be a new US Administration with the same delay arising. Thirdly, there will be a new Greek Cypriot Administration in 2018, but the parties will start preparing for that in 2017. Fourthly, there will be the complications arising from the prospect of international companies drilling for natural gas in 2017 in the eastern Mediterranean, especially if Greek Cyprus starts doing separate deals with them.

In summing up, the President said, “But we have difficulties”. He cited, as a small example, the failure of two confidence-building measures: first, the reluctance of the Greek side to accept help without strings attached in the recent serious forest fire in the south; and, secondly, the unfriendly behaviour of the Greek Cypriot President Anastasiades in refusing to attend the Turkish President’s dinner, to which TRNC President Akinci had also been invited, on the outline of the UN humanitarian summit. To the outsider, these two examples may seem quite trivial but, as mood music, they are a good indicator of the suspicious atmosphere still prevailing on the Greek side in particular. At the end of the meeting the President took a sideswipe at the UK and said that, throughout the time from 1963, we as guarantor power “just watched”. I will come on to this area with questions to the Minister later.

The meeting with the TRNC Foreign Minister was different in tone and much more pessimistic. He essentially did not believe that there would be any solution, and when asked whether there was a plan B, said that five or six plans came to mind but he was not prepared to discuss them at this stage. He also had a swipe at the UK, saying that we did not wish to offend the Greek side due to our fear of losing our sovereign Army bases in the Greek part of the island. On that topic, will the Minister say whether we are planning to cede part or all our bases there if there is a successful settlement? On the plus side of the detail of the peace talks, the Foreign Minister said that there had been good progress in four areas—the economy, the EU, property and governance and power-sharing. The most sensitive issues of territorial adjustment and security guarantees were being left to the end.

Reflecting on my visit, there seems to have been little progress since then. Time has moved on and at the end of October the sensitive issues remain the same. When both sides met at the UN in September, it had been hoped that the UN would be able to announce a multiparty conference to discuss security guarantees. However, President Anastasiades refused to accept this. Furthermore, he refused to agree to any future timetable for the talks. All that could subsequently be agreed to, according to President Anastasiades, is that there could be talks away from the island, in Switzerland, to discuss territorial issues in the first half of November—another example of timetable slippage. The UN special adviser, Espen Eide, has today said that the talks would provide clarity on whether a peace accord can be reached this year.

I myself received a sharp reminder of hostility from the Greek side when I received a letter from the consul-general in London at the Cyprus High Commission, Ioannis Koukoularides. He strongly criticised my July visit to Northern Cyprus. I wrote back that if he had read my speech in the debate of July 2014, he would have understood that I am anxious to see a solution to the Cyprus issue without taking sides between the north and the south. I added that, in that spirit, I went there to see how the peace process was going, and to listen and try to offer advice where appropriate from a neutral basis. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, the chairman of our group, subsequently wrote a letter to the high commissioner in London and I quote one particularly relevant part of it:

“It is not normally helpful for diplomats to write to parliamentarians in such strident and intemperate terms. It is particularly unhelpful when negotiations for a settlement are at such an advanced and sensitive stage”.

Does the Minister agree with him on this?

I now move on to the question of the UK’s role in helping the peace talks. I know what the Minister will say: that the UK cannot get involved in any details of the talks; that it is up to the Turkish and Greek sides to make their own agreement; that as long as our two military bases are secure, we do not need to get involved until the very end stages. Having considered this attitude carefully, I believe that it is wrong. There is a great opportunity to demonstrate that we can have some impact on the world stage behind the scenes by encouraging the Greek side in particular to show some urgency to achieve a settlement through a timetable and by explaining to it the benefits of a settlement. Does the Minister agree with this? The FCO could use my speech of July 2014 to remind it of these benefits.

Before my last debate, the FCO was very helpful and telephoned me to ask me if I had any issues that I would like it to clarify. This time, alas, there was no such luck. Following the departure of the excellent Jill Morris, our party chairman had an unhelpful meeting with Lindsay Appleby, who kept asking us for ideas rather than giving any from the FCO. When I telephoned the FCO this week, no one would discuss the issue with me. Perhaps Caroline Wilson, the new FCO Europe director could take note.

I turn to an analysis that I sketched out in my July 2014 speech and make no apologies for repeating it. This explains a key missing factor in current and previous peace talks. According to a paper from the well-respected Cyprus expert Alexander Lordos, research director for Cyprus 2015, one of his key explanations for the failure of peace talks current and previous is that the Cypriot public are not involved in the peace process. Lordos states that there had been an opportunity to add public opinion analysis to the Annan negotiating process: specifically, Professor Colin Irwin from Ireland was asked in 1998 if he could assist with such a programme. I quote from his book:

“I was invited to attend a meeting of the Greek Turkish Forum in Istanbul in December 1998 ... I made a presentation of my Northern Ireland work to the Greek and Turkish Cypriots present and explained how it was used to help build a consensus around the Belfast agreement. They subsequently decided they would like to undertake a similar programme of research in Cyprus … although the Greek Cypriot negotiators wanted to go ahead with a poll the Turkish Cypriot Government did not ... in the end no polls were undertaken and without the benefits of an effective programme of public diplomacy both the negotiations and subsequent referendum failed”.

The danger of secret negotiations, as are going on now, is that when the results reach the public, there can be a huge hurdle to cross to get them accepted.

Overall, I hope that the Minister will be able to stir the FCO to give the same impetus to the peace talks that she gave to the Scottish Conservative Party in her maiden speech as their leader, where she said in a reference to Lady Thatcher,

“I think you may take it that matron’s handbag will be in hyper-action”.

Will she apply this also to the FCO Cyprus department, so that the UK can play its part in achieving a solution?

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps he could address what I am about to say. I have to declare a professional interest because as counsel I have appeared for the Government of the Republic of Cyprus against Turkey in various cases in the European Court of Human Rights and, for that matter, in the Committee of Ministers—so from that point of view I am one-sided. The noble Lord has not said a single word to indicate that he understands the Greek Cypriot point of view about the invasion, the failure of Turkey to honour judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, or the property issues and its failure to comply on those. Would it not be sensible for him, as an advocate on one side, to show some recognition that there are two sides to the story?

[Lord Northbrook]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. When the consul-general wrote to me I replied saying that I would be pleased to have a discussion with him to give a balanced view of the situation—to which I had no reply.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as a long-standing visitor to both sides of Cyprus, although probably I have been more frequently to the north than to the south. This has gone on for the last 25 years, during which I have increasingly despaired of any solution being found. None the less, like my noble friend Lord Northbrook—I was there slightly after him this summer—I, too, had the pleasure of a one-to-one meeting with the President, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister.

My noble friend outlined exactly the President’s attitude so I will not repeat it. I asked all four, “What is your plan B?”. The President said, “I have no plan B. This either has to work or the whole thing dissolves. There is no plan B”. It was interesting that two other broad plan Bs came out of conversations with the Prime Minister, in particular, and the Deputy Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister. One is that they have some sort of Channel Islands solution. In other words, the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus becomes a Channel Island to Turkey, which formally—it already does actually—takes over responsibility for defence and foreign affairs, and North Cyprus effectively has home rule. Of course, as the politicians pointed out to me, they have an English-based system of justice—quite a different legal system from that of the Republic of Turkey—so it would make quite good sense for them to have that status.

The other solution that was put forward, particularly by the Deputy Prime Minister, which is probably the most sensible in the long term, is that if the negotiations break down, they should just clearly state: “There will be no further talks for 10 years, and we will get on with making this northern part of the island work somehow or other”.

That will work. Having been in North Cyprus for the first time in the late 1980s and intermittently since then—probably six or seven times—I have noticed the way in which it has developed: the new building, the way in which they have solved the water problem, and the developments as they have moved forward. North Cyrus could survive and even prosper without the island being reunited. So it is not the end of the world if these talks fail—although I share the President’s hope that they succeed. However, I feel quite strongly that if they fail, that has to be it. We cannot go on, year after year, having abortive talks and not getting anywhere.

In the event of what I call the 10-year solution, groups such as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have to come much more firmly off the fence and give North Cyprus, if not complete recognition, at least more hope than they do at the moment. However, in fairness to Islamic states, there has been a reasonable input from them into North Cyprus—they are clearly friends of North Cyprus—as of course are the Israelis. There is quite a bit of Israeli investment in North Cyprus, particularly in the gambling industry. But if things do not work, we will need to build an alternative.

My noble friend Lord Northbrook has already mentioned the discussions on territory and property, which will take place in Switzerland during the course of the next month. These are quite crucial. It is no good pretending that North Cyprus can find millions and millions of euros to pay huge amounts of compensation. The money is not there. If we want compensation to be paid, let me ask the Minister: who is going to find the money? It can be found only by the European Union, the United States or the United Kingdom—but it does not exist in North Cyprus. It is no good sending them bills. It would be like sending bills to the debtors’ prison. There is no money in the bank. I believe a famous Labour politician left a note for a famous Tory politician to find when they came into office: “I’m sorry, there’s no money left”.

If a solution is wanted, I believe that it can be found. However, I am not sure that a solution is wanted. My noble friend Lord Northbrook was rather kind in quoting from his letter. I wonder if he would mind if I quote the opening sentence of a letter from a diplomat to a Member of this House:

“Dear Lord Northbrook, I am writing with regard to your recent visit to the occupied part of Cyprus. I understand you visited Cyprus on the despicable anniversary celebrations of the Turkish mass murdering invasion of 1974”.

I am sure the Minister will agree that, were a sentence like that to be found in a letter written by a British Foreign Office official, it would not be accepted as the norm for diplomatic discourse. It is way out of line. If we want to put it in perspective, let me quote yesterday’s Financial Times, which I think summed it up brilliantly and accurately:

“Cyprus has been split along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-inspired coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece”.

I think that is very accurate—and it is what we are up against. In my view, many of the protagonists on both sides are not looking for a settlement. They are looking more for a propaganda coup. But they are talking to their own sides. The Greek side believes what it wants to believe about the Greek negotiating position and how good it is, and the Turks believe that their future lies in Turkey.

President Akinci is actually an extraordinarily brave person. There are a lot of people in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus who agree more with the views of his Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister: “let them get on with things; we are going to survive here; we do not need a settlement”. So the President is doing very well. However, both sides have to want a settlement for it to work—and, with letters like that from the Cyprus High Commission, I am not sure that all sides are on board.

Since I have got the Floor, I will also say that North Cyprus itself needs to do a bit of sorting out. For some time now, I have been following a case that has been 10 years in the Cyprus legal system. I had an assurance from the President in July that there would be a letter, but I have heard nothing. If North Cyprus wants to come in from the cold, it needs to sort out its legal system—and, frankly, it has got to learn to reply to letters. This is not an acceptable way of running things.

Finally, we have Brexit on the horizon. It is not something that I voted for, but I believe that it gives us an opportunity to reverse the situation caused by the ECJ judgment of 1994. North Cyprus needs freer access to trade and I hope that, as part of the Brexit negotiations, we will set aside that judgment and play our part in helping the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to come in from the cold so that all its citizens do not have to live in Tottenham but can travel between the two.

I see that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, clearly does not agree with me. I am sure that he will make his feelings clear to me in private as he is not on the speakers list. As I said, this is a somewhat divisive subject and there are people on both sides. Let us hope it can be solved.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

Before the noble Lord sits down—

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I understand that in time-limited debates it is not usual to make repeated interventions.