Cyprus

Gareth Thomas Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), in the usual way, on securing the Adjournment debate. It would be wrong of me not to acknowledge his gracious and deserved tribute to our hon. Friend, the late Member for Heywood and Middleton, in particular on this issue, but more generally as well.

The debate is timely, especially given Britain’s long association with Cyprus and the continuing challenge facing the country’s leaders and people and those of us who are friends of Cyprus on how to secure a lasting resolution of the division of the island. Many people of Cypriot extraction, Greek and Turkish alike, live in the UK, with many in my own constituency. They, too, want to see a lasting solution to the island’s divisions, but they certainly want to see a fair and just resolution of the many issues that have prevented a successful settlement to date.

I want to acknowledge the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) and that of the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who echoed in a different way one particularly powerful point made by my hon. Friend, which was about the important joint work on missing persons—the 1,500 people still missing—and especially the missing children, an issue that will have struck many of those reading the record of our proceedings. My hon. Friend asked two questions of the Minister, about funding and about access to areas where missing persons’ remains might be buried. I hope that the Minister will address those two key requests.

The hon. Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made important points about the need for the political leaders with crucial roles in the talks to let the potential of Cyprus’s future inform the negotiations. Clearly, the past cannot be forgotten and the legacy has to be addressed, but the potential for Cyprus’s future, to which the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate alluded, should surely provide the ongoing motivation for those closely involved in the present negotiations.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded the north. A military coup on the island backed by the Government in Athens was the supposed pretext for the invasion, which saw the island partitioned. Roughly, the northern third was inhabited by Turkish Cypriots and south by Greek Cypriots. There are many estimates about the scale of the upheaval that followed. The United Nations suggested at the time that some 165,000 Greek Cypriots had had to flee or were expelled from the north, with some 45,000 Turkish Cypriots going from the south.

Such figures are heavily contested. Whether one accepts them or thinks that they are higher, they nevertheless hide many individual tragedies arising from the events in 1974. Furthermore, communities that had lived together for hundreds of years were torn apart. A considerable number of people are still missing, which I alluded to earlier; homes invested with incomes and considerable emotion had to be deserted, almost at a moment’s notice; and many cultural and religious sites, including many churches, are unused and inevitably in poor condition as a result. My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton mentioned parts of Nicosia that have been left almost untouched since then. The still deserted Varosha part of Famagusta stands as the perhaps most permanent challenge to the status quo on the island. Its future will be one of the many issues that needs to be addressed. I will come back to that point.

The green line is the UN buffer zone, which stretches from Morphou through Nicosia to Famagusta. It is patrolled by UN troops and has only a small number of designated crossing points. It now divides the two parts of Cyprus. There have been a number of serious attempts to secure a lasting resolution to the situation in Cyprus, but to date they have been unsuccessful.

I understand that for the first time, last Friday, the new UN special adviser, the Norwegian diplomat Espen Barth Eide, met separately with the leaders of the two sides, President Nicos Anastasiades and the Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu. Plans for a further joint meeting next week are encouraging. It is also encouraging that, despite some recent comments, both President Erdogan and Prime Minister Samaras were able to meet in the margins of the NATO summit on Friday to discuss Cyprus. I hope the Minister will set out what further steps the Government are taking to support the effort to build personal and political trust between the key leaders on Cyprus. In particular, what support is being given to the new UN special adviser?

Trust between political leaders is clearly a first, essential step if a deal is to be achieved, but other opinion formers on both sides of the green line need to feel their voices are being listened to. Will the Minister tell us what steps the Government have put in place or are encouraging to build dialogue between faith leaders and others in civil society, to help engender better relationships? I understand that there have been some encouraging contacts between business leaders in the two parts of Cyprus. Again, it would be good to hear what efforts our Government and others are making to build those relationships further.

It would be useful, too, to make sure that at this point of transition the European Union continues to be heavily involved in the effort to get a lasting settlement. Will the Minister discuss not just the role of the current High Representative but the efforts being made to brief the incoming High Representative, to prioritise the need for her active engagement in resolving the situation?

Other Members have already alluded to the encouraging visit of the US vice-president to Cyprus recently. Again, it will be useful to hear what further discussions the Foreign Office has had with the US to encourage it to maintain its interest and engagement in finding a solution.

Previous efforts to achieve a long-term solution to Cyprus’s political future have been conducted against a very different economic outlook. Cyprus is currently emerging from a difficult time economically—its banks have had to be bailed out—and in the north, too, the economic situation is a long way from ideal. Other Members have already alluded to the potential long-term prospects for the Cypriot economy, partly from the discovery of oil and gas. I understand that the UN has estimated that a long-term settlement could deliver a 3% boost to economic growth on the whole of the island—a far from insignificant potential peace dividend.

There are, inevitably, regional powers with a crucial role to play. Greece and Turkey are the two most obvious, but Israel, too, has a role. Will the Minister update hon. Members on the discussions he or others have had with those three regional powers?

It is to the credit of both President Anastasiades and Premier Eroglu that they have been willing to embark on renewed negotiations. We should continue to be positive about the signing of the joint declaration after such lengthy discussions in February and welcome the dialogue between both men personally and between the negotiators.

Previous negotiations have moved the process forward, but serious and significant challenges remain, not least on security, property, compensation and the distribution of powers in a new Government. The challenge the negotiators have to think through is how to build confidence among the peoples of Cyprus, while those difficult issues are being explored. I encourage the Minister to welcome the potential involvement of European parliamentarians and the High Representative and to think through what else can be done to build trust and confidence in the negotiations, among people on the island and in ex-patriot communities. Other commentators have suggested that negotiators from other, successfully resolved conflicts might offer a helpful perspective to those currently negotiating the future in Cyprus; it would be good to hear the Minister’s view on that.

Comments on both sides about the negotiations—both on specific elements and, more generally, on the way they have been conducted—have had a slightly less positive tone of late. I am sure we all recognise that all difficult negotiations have their bumpy moments, but it is important for those of us who want a long-term settlement to continue to encourage the key players and support deeper and wider engagement in the process, to help continue to achieve progress even when there are difficult moments. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how that wider engagement is being built and, in particular, about how the Foreign Office is supporting the key players in Cyprus in continuing to move the process forward.