In an interview at the 9th Delphi Forum, the Foreign Minister of the Republic of Cyprus, Constantinos Kombos, referred to a possible Iranian attack on Israel and the consequences it would have for Cyprus and the wider region.
The Cypriot Foreign Minister assessed that if Iran strikes Israel directly, we will be faced with a paradigm shift, which will reflect a change in the operational and political stance of this country and will have serious consequences on the wider region.
The Republic of Cyprus is preparing for every scenario, Kombos stressed, while noting that diplomatic and political time has been accelerated. He also suggested that such an attack would be an escalation of the Middle East crisis in the worst possible way. “The message we want to convey is restraint,” Kombos noted.
As he said, the Republic of Cyprus would be directly affected by this in many ways. There may be a need to evacuate third-country nationals from the region and therefore Cyprus may have to activate the National Plan ‘Estia
‘ – a possibility for which it has already prepared, he explained.
“A second issue which is of great concern to us is the possibility of migratory flows. We should clearly distinguish between the two issues. It is one issue the evacuations to repatriate third country nationals and another refugee flows that may result from such an escalation,” he said.
He explained that the refugee arrivals from Syria have increased and this creates great concern to the Cypriot government. For this reason, he noted, the Republic of Cyprus has been making a systematic effort to find a solution, part of which is the recent visit of the President of the Republic of Cyprus to Lebanon is part of. “The migration problem is common to Cyprus and Lebanon; therefore, the solution should be common, with the contribution of the EU,” The Cypriot Foreign Minister underlined.
More broadly, Kombos referred to the Amalthea humanitarian corridor to Gaza – an initiative taken by Cyprus that now has led to a wider alliance, with the help of t
he US, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, and the EU.
“The Republic of Cyprus is not a monothematic state, which only asks for support on the Cyprus problem,” Kombos stressed.
As regards the Cyprus issue, the Cypriot Foreign Minister highlighted the appointment of a new UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy for Cyprus after seven years as an important consequence of the initiatives taken by the Cypriot government.
“However, we have to deal with a public rhetoric from the other side, which refers to two states, sovereign equality or cooperation between entities”, he said.
The Cypriot government is making every effort to restart the negotiations from where they left off in Crans Montana, however, the two sides have completely different starting points at the current moment, Kombos explained.
“We cannot ignore the fact that the other side is positioned outside the UN Security Council framework of a bizonal bicommunal federation with political equality and insists on ideas of a two-state solution, in whatever
way may it presents them in terms of rhetoric,” Kombos pointed out.
“The position of the Cypriot government is that we are not discussing anything other than the solution of a bizonal bicommunal federation with political equality,’ he stressed.
“We are ready to return to the negotiating table today,” the Foreign Minister said while stressing that there is also a duty to protect the Republic of Cyprus and therefore no solution of a secessionist nature can be accepted.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded and occupied the island’s northern third. The latest round of talks ended in Crans Montana in July 2017 without result. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed María Ángela Holguín Cuéllar of Colombia as his personal envoy for Cyprus, to assume a Good Offices role on his behalf and search for common ground on the way forward in the Cyprus issue.
Source: Cyprus News Agency
