Our View: Prioritising people’s needs over leadership machinations

The mayor of Athienou in Larnaca has made a strong case for a crossing at nearby Pyroi following agreement by the two leaders in New York with the UN chief to discuss the opening of new checkpoints.

It would cut travel time to Nicosia from 45-60 minutes down to ten. The benefits for the residents need not be spelled out.  Kokkina in the north-west was also mentioned.

The Turkish Cypriot side have mooted Mia Milia in Nicosia as a priority, some suggest because it would offer closer access to Tymbou (Ercan) airport. It would also ease traffic at Nicosia’s only vehicle crossing at Ayios Dhometios, they argue.

Pyroi won’t be an easy fix. The Turkish side has consistently opposed it, citing “military sensitivity” due to several Turkish installations.

This is likely to necessitate more than one meeting between President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, and keep them talking perhaps.

Detractors may suggest Antonio Guterres picked low-hanging fruit to show that the UN can perform miracles by raising the Cyprob from the dead and making it twitch.

But in the absence of common ground, Guterres needed a way to get the leaders into the same room in Cyprus given their polar positions on everything else.

Neither could really refuse to discuss something so basic as crossings.

Nine exist, but it’s been almost six years since the last two opened, in Dherynia and Lefka.

Critics on the Greek Cypriot side say the leaders shouldn’t be spending valuable time talking about crossings when it could be done by their negotiators.

Others fear the crossings could be used as a substitute for a solution, that the situation would be normalised.

None of this is the point.

If Christodoulides and Tatar cannot sit down and agree on opening a couple of new crossings – if they turn it into a zero-sum game – it will not bode well for an informal five-party conference on more substantive issues. 

Guterres is testing their commitment after playing cat and mouse with each other for 18 months.

It’s hard to see the Greek Cypriot side objecting to Mia Milia, even though it raises the possibility of more people opting to fly out from Tymbou.  But even Turkish Cypriots prefer to fly out of Larnaca.

Tatar will likely oppose Pyroi due to the military installations. But they could be moved.

It’s hardly credible that the Turkish army might be concerned about security for fear of the Cyprus National Guard, deemed in a report on Thursday to be weak and “practically defenceless”.

Maybe Tatar does look on multiple crossings as a strategy for a two-state solution. “Border” crossings already set up and “part of the status quo” would be convenient but delusional.

Whatever the machinations of the leaderships with respect to their choice of crossing, the wants and needs of the people on both sides should be the priority.

For anyone who remembers how things were before 2003, what we have now has been a huge leap forward and without the “bloodbath” predicted back then by Rauf Denktash.