Cyprus Talks: North Cyprus president, Mustafa Akinci says the North got what it wanted

North Cyprus President Mustafa Akinci on Friday briefed representatives on the Cyprus negotiations at the Assembly.

Akinci told reporters that the collapse in talks in Mont Pèlerin, Switzerland has been overcome, pointing out that an agreement had been reached to hold a five-party conference in January 2017, adding this was something the Turkish Cypriot side wanted.

“We now have a date for the five-party conference. We now know what we are going to do before that. We know that the guarantor countries will be invited to that conference. So as a result we now have a new conjuncture before us. This is what we wanted.

This was something which we proposed and which we desired. It is our hope and desire that we solve this decade’s long problem hand in hand with productive to be carried out work there”, he said.

When asked about missing out on the 2016 deadline for a settlement, Akinci noted that, it was something not to be worried about.

“This is not important. As I said earlier what was important was for the main framework of a settlement to emerge before the end of 2016 so that we could finalise the technical details in the early months of 2017.

Work on drafting the constitution, the federal laws and other technical legislation was already expected to be left to 2017.

We would then give people several months to read, discuss and decide on the final solution agreement. We were talking about a referendum at the middle of 2017. We are only off our target by 9-10 days. As long as we reach a solution such a delay is fine”, he said.

Source: BRT