Annan Plan for Cyprus

The Annan Plan was a United Nations proposal to settle the Cyprus dispute of the divided island nation of Cyprus as the United Cyprus Republic. It was named in recognition of the then United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who largely devised the proposal in conjunction with Didier Pfirter.

Proposal

Proposed flag of the United Cyprus Republic

Daniel Fried (member of the National Security Council and special advisor to President Bush), stated on 26 June 2004 "When we were trying to convince Turkey to allow the passage of our troops through its territory in Northern Iraq, we gave Turkey two motives: several billion dollars in the form of donations and loans and Cyprus in the form of the Annan plan."From the outset the Annan Plan involved very little consultation of Cypriots themselves.

The Annan Plan had undergone five revisions in order to reach its final version. The 5th revision of the Annan Plan^[1] proposed the creation of the United Cyprus Republic, covering the island of Cyprus in its entirety except for the British Sovereign Base Areas. This new country was to be a loose confederation of two component states — the Greek Cypriot State and the Turkish Cypriot State — joined together by a minimal federal government apparatus.

This confederal level,was purported to be loosely based on the Swiss federal model, would have incorporated the following elements:

• A collective Presidential Council, made up of six voting members, allocated according to population (per present levels, four Greek Cypriots and two Turkish Cypriots), and selected and voted in by parliament. An additional three non-voting members would be assigned 2:1.
• A President and Vice President, chosen by the Presidential Council from among its members, one from each community, to alternate in their functions every 20 months during the council's five-year term of office.
• A bicameral legislature:
  • A Senate (upper house), with 48 members, divided 24:24 between the two communities.
  • A Chamber of Deputies (lower house), with 48 members, divided in proportion to the two communities' populations (with no fewer than 12 for the smaller community).
• A Supreme Court composed of equal numbers of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot judges, plus three foreign judges; to be appointed by the Presidential Council.

The plan included a federal constitution, constitutions for each constituent state, a string of constitutional and federal laws, and a proposal for a United Cyprus Republic flag and a national anthem. It also provided for a Reconciliation Commission to bring the two communities closer together and resolve outstanding disputes from the past.

It would also have established a limited right to return between the territories of the two communities, and it would have allowed both Greece and Turkey to maintain a permanent military presence on the island, albeit with large, phased reductions in troop numbers.

Negotiations

In January 2002, direct talks under the auspices of Kofi Annan began between the representatives of the two communities, the President of the Republic of Cyprus Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot Leader Rauf Denktaş.

In November 2002, Kofi Annan released a comprehensive plan for the resolution of the Cyprus issue. It was revised in early December. In the lead up to the European Union (EU)'s December 2002 Copenhagen Summit, intensive efforts were made to gain both sides' signatures to the document before a decision on the island's EU membership. Neither side agreed to sign. The EU invited the Republic of Cyprus to join on 16 December 2002.

Following the Copenhagen Summit, the UN continued dialogue with the two sides with the goal of reaching a settlement before Cyprus's signature of the EU accession treaty on 16 April 2003. A third version of the Annan plan was put to the parties in February 2003. That same month Annan again visited the island and asked that both leaders agree to put the plan to referendum in their respective communities. Also in February 2003, Tassos Papadopoulos was elected as the fifth president of the Republic of Cyprus. On 10 March 2003, this most recent phase of talks collapsed in The Hague, Netherlands, when Denktaş told the Secretary-General he would not put the Annan Plan to referendum. "The plan was unacceptable for us. This was not a plan we would ask our people to vote for," Denktaş said. The UN plan had undergone several revisions in an attempt to win support. It was the Turkish Cypriot side which refused to even talk further, and which was blamed for the failure of the peace process. ^[2]

In February 2004, Papadopoulos and Denktaş accepted Kofi Annan's invitation to resume negotiations on a settlement on the basis of the Annan plan. After meeting with Annan in New York, talks began on-island on 19 February 2004. The two community leaders, Rauf Denktaş and Tassos Papadopoulos, met nearly every day for negotiations facilitated by Álvaro de Soto, Secretary General's Special Adviser for Cyprus. In addition, numerous technical committees and subcommittees met in parallel in an effort to resolve outstanding issues. When this stage of the talks failed to reach an agreed settlement Rauf Denktaş refused to attend the next stage of meetings which were scheduled to take place in Bόrgenstock on 24 March 2004 and sent the then prime minister Mehmet Ali Talat (who later became Denktaş' successor as President) and his son Serdar Denktaş (who later served as deputy prime minister). The talks collapsed and no negotiated agreement was reached by the two communities. Annan then stepped in as arbitrator and on 31 March presented to the two sides a proposed final settlement. Rauf Denktaş rejected Annan's proposal immediately and Tassos Papadopoulos rejected the plan a week later while Mehmet Ali Talat supported it.

Referendum

The main reason for the 75% "No" vote among Greek Cypriots in the referendum was their perception that the Annan Plan was unbalanced and excessively pro-Turkish as it stated that one Turkish Cypriot's votes would be equal to two Greek Cypriot votes^[3], and that it would not safeguard Greek Cypriot rights in the north. On the Turkish Cypriot side, the plan was felt to be excessively pro-Greek^{[citation needed]}, but most Turkish Cypriots were willing to accept it as a means of ending their prolonged international isolation and exclusion from the wider European economy^{[citation needed]}. The political leaders of both sides (Tassos Papadopoulos and Rauf Denktaş) campaigned for a 'no' vote.

Opinions by experts and commentators

"It appeared that the UN and the EU were bent on legitimising at least some of the consequences of the Turkish invasion of 1974, because the EU wanted to take the Cyprus issue off the table in order to facilitate negotiations on Turkey's accession to the EU... Greek Cypriots would not have freedom of movement in their own country. In a way, the Greek Cypriots would have been ghettoised" Shlomo Avineri, Professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and former Director-General of Israel’s foreign ministry.

"... had he [Annan] been more closely involved in the details, [he] would not have wished his name to be historically associated with such departures from international law and human rights standards. Claire Palley, Constitutional Law adviser to Cypriot governments since 1980, in 'An International Relations Debacle', 2005

"...a significant opportunity to reach an agreed settlement was lost as a result of the conduct of the UN Secretariat, advised by the USA and the UK. Claire Palley, in 'An International Relations Debacle', 2005

"The Secretariat sought to mislead the international community through the Secretary-General's Reports and briefings it prepared, so as to pressure a small state effectively to accept the consequences of aggression by a large neighbouring state allied to two permanent members of the Security Council. Claire Palley, in 'An International Relations Debacle', 2005

"If the Greek-Cypriots say 'no' to the Annan plan, we will take them to a new referendum, until they say 'yes'. Lord Hanney, the British architect of the Annan plan

Further Reading

• Van Coufoudakis & Klearchos Kyriakides, The Case Against the Annan Plan, 2003 (ISBN 0 9538891 1 4). Also online at http://www.lobbyforcyprus.org/annanplan/Lobby-Annan-book-lo-res.pdf.
• Claire Palley, An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretary-general's Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004. Hart Publishing, 2005, pp. 224. (ISBN 1-84113-578-X)

See also

• 2004 Annan Plan Referendum
• Cypriot refugees
• Chinese reunification
• Korean reunification
• Romanian reunification

References

Sources

• "Negotiations" section adapted from public domain U.S. State Department background note on Cyprus, April 2004
• Supplementary material based on:
  • Letter by the President of the Republic, Mr Tassos Papadopoulos, to the U.N. Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, dated 7 June, which circulated as an official document of the U.N. Security Council
  • Legal Issues arising from certain population transfers and displacements on the territory of the Republic of Cyprus in the period since 20 July 1974
  • Address to Cypriots by President Papadopoulos (FULL TEXT)
  • House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report on Cyprus

External links

• The Annan Plan: full text and additional information from the United Nations
• Cyprus Decides: a bipartisan information resource about the Plan
• The Republic of Cyprus: press and information office
• The BBC report on the plan
• Annan Plan: The "known-unknown" behind the scenes facts: Very well documented site with information for and against the Annan Plan with many rare and unknown documents
• “The Annan Plan” by Pavlos Andronikos. Originally published in Neos Kosmos English Weekly (Melbourne) 25 Nov., 2 & 9 Dec. 2002.
• The “Yes” and the “No” Votes: An Explanation.
• Cypriots split over UN plan.
• Still torn