By Neil MacDonald in Belgrade
Serbia on Tuesday condemned Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence, as the International Court of Justice held its first public hearings on the issue.
While Serbia’s chief representative, Dusan Batakovic, attacked the “flagrant violation” of international law, Kosovo’s foreign minister, Skender Hyseni, argued that 1990s brutality had invalidated any right by Belgrade to rule the disputed territory.
The then-province’s ethnic Albanian majority declared independence after almost nine years of United Nations post-war government. Kosovo gained rapid backing from the US and most European Union member states, yet without UN endorsement or Serbia’s consent.
Although the ICJ cannot make a binding ruling, Belgrade has sought the UN-backed court’s advisory opinion aiming to stem further international recognition and force Kosovo’s separatists back to negotiations for some “compromise solution”.
“Kosovo is the historic cradle of Serbia,” said Mr Batakovic, head of the delegation and Serbian ambassador to France, alluding partly to the medieval Orthodox monasteries dotted around the territory of 2m people. But he also described the ethnic Albanian secession declaration as “a major challenge to international order”, with potential echoes for any country with a disaffected minority region.
Mr Hyseni, however, said renewed negotiations would be “inconceivable” except between equal sovereign states. Undermining independence “would be highly disruptive and could even spark new conflict in the region,” he said.
Nato warplanes in 1999 ended a crackdown by Serb security forces under Slobodan Milosevic, president of Yugoslavia, which had killed nearly 10,000 and displaced nearly 1m Kosovo Albanians. Belgade today expresses regret over the former regime’s actions.
But Mr Hyseni said elected representatives last year had simply carried out the will of Kosovo’s people, resulting in a state now recognised by 63 others worldwide. Yet the UN Security Council remains divided, with Russia and China defending Serbia’s territorial integrity.
All five permanent Security Council members are to testify, along with 24 other countries, in nine days of hearings in The Hague, with the ruling by the 15-judge panel to come months later.
“Pursuing this case is a futile exercise on the part of Serbia,” said Muhamet Hamiti, Kosovo’s ambassador to the UK.
Yet the outcome “matters in one sense – that a lot of countries still sitting on the fence will [afterwards] opt to recognise the fact of Kosovo’s independence,” Mr Hamiti added. “Hopefully, this should also end of Serbia’s constant state of denial.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
EU rewards Serbian progress on war crimes
By Tony Barber in Brussels
The European Union on Monday boosted Serbia’s EU membership prospects by unfreezing a trade agreement as reward for improved co-operation with war crimes investigators.
EU foreign ministers approved the decision after evaluating a report from Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations’ war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia.
The step paves the way for a formal application for EU entry, which Serbia’s government is expected to submit later this month or in January.
Under EU rules the 27-nation bloc’s governments would then ask the European Commission to draw up an opinion on Serbia’s application. This would lead to the formal start of accession talks, a process that usually lasts several years.
Although Serbian entry is a long way off, the outlook for another round of EU enlargement has brightened over the past six months. Iceland applied for membership in July, and Croatia settled a border dispute with Slovenia in October that had blocked its accession talks for almost a year.
Reykjavik and Zagreb may be able to join the EU in 2012, but some hard work lies ahead for Croatia in areas such as fighting organised crime and corruption.
Meanwhile, the Commission is preparing opinions on the membership bids of Albania and Montenegro.
In a further sign of progress, EU governments agreed last week to allow visa-free travel in the bloc for citizens of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia from December 19.
The countries facing the biggest obstacles to joining the EU are Bosnia-Herzegovina, paralysed by internal nationalist rivalries, Macedonia, locked in a dispute with Greece over its name, and Turkey, which is an official candidate for membership but whose bid is opposed by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, and Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.
The EU and Serbia signed their trade deal last year but the Netherlands blocked its implementation on the grounds that Belgrade was not co-operating fully with the war crimes tribunal – in particular, by not arresting Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb general accused of committing atrocities in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
The Dutch government agreed to unfreeze the trade accord in recognition of Mr Brammertz’s assessment, delivered to the Security Council last week, that Serbia’s co-operation with his office had “continued to progress”.
Mr Brammertz stopped short of stating Serbia was “fully co-operating” with the tribunal. Belgrade’s path to EU membership therefore remains tied to the question of Mr Mladic and Goran Hadzic, another fugitive war crimes suspect.
“Pressure must be maintained in order for the two remaining fugitives to be found and extradited to The Hague,” Maxime Verhagen, Dutch foreign minister, said last week.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
The European Union on Monday boosted Serbia’s EU membership prospects by unfreezing a trade agreement as reward for improved co-operation with war crimes investigators.
EU foreign ministers approved the decision after evaluating a report from Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations’ war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia.
The step paves the way for a formal application for EU entry, which Serbia’s government is expected to submit later this month or in January.
Under EU rules the 27-nation bloc’s governments would then ask the European Commission to draw up an opinion on Serbia’s application. This would lead to the formal start of accession talks, a process that usually lasts several years.
Although Serbian entry is a long way off, the outlook for another round of EU enlargement has brightened over the past six months. Iceland applied for membership in July, and Croatia settled a border dispute with Slovenia in October that had blocked its accession talks for almost a year.
Reykjavik and Zagreb may be able to join the EU in 2012, but some hard work lies ahead for Croatia in areas such as fighting organised crime and corruption.
Meanwhile, the Commission is preparing opinions on the membership bids of Albania and Montenegro.
In a further sign of progress, EU governments agreed last week to allow visa-free travel in the bloc for citizens of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia from December 19.
The countries facing the biggest obstacles to joining the EU are Bosnia-Herzegovina, paralysed by internal nationalist rivalries, Macedonia, locked in a dispute with Greece over its name, and Turkey, which is an official candidate for membership but whose bid is opposed by Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, and Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.
The EU and Serbia signed their trade deal last year but the Netherlands blocked its implementation on the grounds that Belgrade was not co-operating fully with the war crimes tribunal – in particular, by not arresting Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb general accused of committing atrocities in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
The Dutch government agreed to unfreeze the trade accord in recognition of Mr Brammertz’s assessment, delivered to the Security Council last week, that Serbia’s co-operation with his office had “continued to progress”.
Mr Brammertz stopped short of stating Serbia was “fully co-operating” with the tribunal. Belgrade’s path to EU membership therefore remains tied to the question of Mr Mladic and Goran Hadzic, another fugitive war crimes suspect.
“Pressure must be maintained in order for the two remaining fugitives to be found and extradited to The Hague,” Maxime Verhagen, Dutch foreign minister, said last week.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
Greece can expect no gifts from Europe
By Wolfgang Münchau
After Dubai, will Greece be next? This question is technically a category error, since Dubai World is not a state but a state-owned company. But many investors rightly do not care about the difference. Last week investors started to fret about sovereign default in earnest. So what about Greece?
We were already wondering about a Greek default at the beginning of this year, when eurozone bond spreads suddenly widened. In February Peer Steinbrück, the former German finance minister, abruptly ended the speculation by saying the eurozone would act if someone got into trouble. There was no concrete action plan. No work had been done to amend European treaties. There was no budgetary appropriation. Just a sentence. Investors believed him and all was well – for a while.
The speculation is now back, but there is one difference. The eurozone will not come to the rescue this time, verbally or otherwise, unless Greece meets a number of conditions the European Union is likely to impose in the coming months.
The EU’s authorities, rightly or wrongly, are more afraid of the moral hazard of a bail-out than the possible spillover effect of a hypothetical Greek default to other eurozone countries. If faced with a choice between preserving the integrity of the stability pact and the integrity of Greece, they are currently minded to choose the former. To safeguard what is left of the stability pact, they are determined to link any help to a country’s willingness to comply. Otherwise the EU fears it might lose all leverage over budgetary processes elsewhere in the eurozone. And no country in the eurozone has flouted the pact more than Greece.
Here are the numbers. This year, the budget deficit will rise to 12.7 per cent of gross domestic product – and this assumes there are no further accounting tricks to be uncovered. Deutsche Bank calculated in a recent research note that the country’s public debt-to-GDP ratio is headed for 135 per cent. Gross external debt – private and public sector debt owed to foreign creditors – was 149.2 per cent at the end of last year. The real exchange rate has gone up by 17 per cent since 2006, which means the country is losing competitiveness at an incredible rate. Had Greece not been in the eurozone, it would be heading straight for default.
The government’s 2010 draft budget foresees a deficit reduction to about 9.1 per cent of GDP. But the number is misleading. The lion’s share of the total deficit reduction effort is earmarked to come from tax measures, and most of those from the fight against tax evasion. Tax evasion is always the item first on the list of desperate governments. The European Commission and Europe’s finance ministers, who have heard this story before, are rightly asking for genuine deficit reduction. So is George Provopoulos, the Greek central bank governor, who demanded that two-thirds of the entire deficit reduction effort should come in the form of spending cuts. If the Greek parliament confirms the government’s soft budget next month, the European Commission will almost certainly judge the effort insufficient and demand a supplementary budget. It might also ask for structural reform, including pension reform.
If the Greek government refused to comply, which is quite possible, the next step could be the penalty procedure under the stability pact. So instead of helping Greece, the EU might be asking Greece to pay a penalty. This in turn would aggravate Greece’s financial position in the unlikely event that the government would agree to pay it.
The current strategy of the EU is to raise the political pressure – perhaps even provoke a political crisis – with the strategic objective that the Greek government might eventually relent. It is a dangerous strategy that could easily backfire. Even if George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, were sympathetic to the EU’s demand, he would face enormous political headwinds if he tried to implement draconian austerity measures. This would be the very opposite of what he promised during the recent election. The real problem is that the Greek people have not been prepared by their political leaders for what lies ahead.
So what happens if Greece cannot meet a payment on its bonds, or fails to roll over existing debt? About two-thirds of Greece’s public debt is held by foreigners. According to calculations from Deutsche Bank, Greece is looking to raise some €31bn ($46bn, £28bn) in new borrowing and €16bn to roll over existing debt next year. In the absence of help from the eurozone, the Greek government would have to resort to the International Monetary Fund if it were to encounter difficulties refinancing the debt. Unlike Argentina, Greece cannot devalue, and leaving the eurozone is not a realistic policy option either. Latvian-style austerity could thus come one way or the other, with or without default. But it might be politically easier for the present government to have austerity imposed on it from the outside than from the inside. This is another reason why the EU would be happy to let the IMF take a lead.
Just as the Greek people are unprepared for austerity, investors are unprepared for what awaits them. I would still bet that outright default is unlikely. But I wonder whether the current Greek bond spreads reflect the true risks.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
After Dubai, will Greece be next? This question is technically a category error, since Dubai World is not a state but a state-owned company. But many investors rightly do not care about the difference. Last week investors started to fret about sovereign default in earnest. So what about Greece?
We were already wondering about a Greek default at the beginning of this year, when eurozone bond spreads suddenly widened. In February Peer Steinbrück, the former German finance minister, abruptly ended the speculation by saying the eurozone would act if someone got into trouble. There was no concrete action plan. No work had been done to amend European treaties. There was no budgetary appropriation. Just a sentence. Investors believed him and all was well – for a while.
The speculation is now back, but there is one difference. The eurozone will not come to the rescue this time, verbally or otherwise, unless Greece meets a number of conditions the European Union is likely to impose in the coming months.
The EU’s authorities, rightly or wrongly, are more afraid of the moral hazard of a bail-out than the possible spillover effect of a hypothetical Greek default to other eurozone countries. If faced with a choice between preserving the integrity of the stability pact and the integrity of Greece, they are currently minded to choose the former. To safeguard what is left of the stability pact, they are determined to link any help to a country’s willingness to comply. Otherwise the EU fears it might lose all leverage over budgetary processes elsewhere in the eurozone. And no country in the eurozone has flouted the pact more than Greece.
Here are the numbers. This year, the budget deficit will rise to 12.7 per cent of gross domestic product – and this assumes there are no further accounting tricks to be uncovered. Deutsche Bank calculated in a recent research note that the country’s public debt-to-GDP ratio is headed for 135 per cent. Gross external debt – private and public sector debt owed to foreign creditors – was 149.2 per cent at the end of last year. The real exchange rate has gone up by 17 per cent since 2006, which means the country is losing competitiveness at an incredible rate. Had Greece not been in the eurozone, it would be heading straight for default.
The government’s 2010 draft budget foresees a deficit reduction to about 9.1 per cent of GDP. But the number is misleading. The lion’s share of the total deficit reduction effort is earmarked to come from tax measures, and most of those from the fight against tax evasion. Tax evasion is always the item first on the list of desperate governments. The European Commission and Europe’s finance ministers, who have heard this story before, are rightly asking for genuine deficit reduction. So is George Provopoulos, the Greek central bank governor, who demanded that two-thirds of the entire deficit reduction effort should come in the form of spending cuts. If the Greek parliament confirms the government’s soft budget next month, the European Commission will almost certainly judge the effort insufficient and demand a supplementary budget. It might also ask for structural reform, including pension reform.
If the Greek government refused to comply, which is quite possible, the next step could be the penalty procedure under the stability pact. So instead of helping Greece, the EU might be asking Greece to pay a penalty. This in turn would aggravate Greece’s financial position in the unlikely event that the government would agree to pay it.
The current strategy of the EU is to raise the political pressure – perhaps even provoke a political crisis – with the strategic objective that the Greek government might eventually relent. It is a dangerous strategy that could easily backfire. Even if George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, were sympathetic to the EU’s demand, he would face enormous political headwinds if he tried to implement draconian austerity measures. This would be the very opposite of what he promised during the recent election. The real problem is that the Greek people have not been prepared by their political leaders for what lies ahead.
So what happens if Greece cannot meet a payment on its bonds, or fails to roll over existing debt? About two-thirds of Greece’s public debt is held by foreigners. According to calculations from Deutsche Bank, Greece is looking to raise some €31bn ($46bn, £28bn) in new borrowing and €16bn to roll over existing debt next year. In the absence of help from the eurozone, the Greek government would have to resort to the International Monetary Fund if it were to encounter difficulties refinancing the debt. Unlike Argentina, Greece cannot devalue, and leaving the eurozone is not a realistic policy option either. Latvian-style austerity could thus come one way or the other, with or without default. But it might be politically easier for the present government to have austerity imposed on it from the outside than from the inside. This is another reason why the EU would be happy to let the IMF take a lead.
Just as the Greek people are unprepared for austerity, investors are unprepared for what awaits them. I would still bet that outright default is unlikely. But I wonder whether the current Greek bond spreads reflect the true risks.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
Energy: Success of oil pipeline depends on whims of Moscow
By David O’Byrne
At 30km long but just 700m wide at its narrowest, Istanbul’s Bosphorus strait is one of world’s most crowded and potentially hazardous waterways, where even with state-of-the-art radar monitoring, transiting ships are still obliged to take on a pilot.
Fringed with forests and villages on its upper reaches, and the palaces and mosques of Istanbul at its lower end, it is also one of the most beautiful.
It is no surprise then that with oil tanker traffic through the straits having more than doubled since 1995 and expected to double again in the next decade on the back of fast-rising oil production in Russia and the Caspian basin, Turkey is keen to provide an alternative export route.
“Traffic through the strait already presents an unacceptable risk to the population of Istanbul, and any oil pipeline that can relieve the pressure will be welcome,” says Burak Ozugergin, spokesman for Turkey’s foreign ministry which has long warned of the dangers posed by too much tanker traffic.
Turkey’s own proposed solution is the Samsun-Ceyhan, or Trans Anatolian pipeline, planned to carry oil from Turkey’s Black Sea coast, 550km across the country to the Mediterranean coast, bypassing the crowded Bosphorus.
Sponsored by a consortium of Turkey’s Calik Enerji and Eni of Italy it is designed to carry up to 1.5m barrels per day.
It is also expected to help kickstart a new petroleum refining, petrochemicals and manufacturing sector at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, which Turkey has long harboured ambitions of turning into a major regional energy hub.
However despite presiding over a ground-breaking ceremony at Ceyhan in 2007, Calik and Eni have struggled to secure sufficient commitments of oil to ensure the line will be commercially viable.
Eni can supply oil from the giant Kashagan field in Kazakhstan which it is developing in partnership with Kazakh state oil company KazMunaiGaz, but the line also needs oil from Russian or Kazakh producers.
Support has been slow in coming, however, with Russia having long backed a rival project to build a pipeline through Bulgaria and Greece – a far shorter route, and Kazakhstan having long declined to commit to any of the competing schemes.
That situation has now changed with a recent agreement between Turkey, Italy and Russia committing the three countries to work together on this and other regional energy projects.
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin also announced that he had secured Kazakh support for the project – a claim yet to be confirmed by Almaty.
“The agreement allows for Russian oil companies Rosneft and Tatneft to join the project either by committing oil or by becoming partners,” says Mustafa Aksoy, Calik Holding’s Director of Projects and Investments.
“With these two companies on board the project we expect to be able to make the final investment decision by the end of 2010,” he adds.
It is an important step, but there is still no definite commitment of oil to the Samsun-Ceyhan line. It also confirms that Moscow can make or break the project.
“Shipping oil by tanker through the strait is always going to be cheaper than any pipeline,” says John Roberts, Caspian analyst at Platts.
“Ultimately Russia controls the oil routes from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and only Russia can ensure the line has enough oil to make it viable.”
Such a move by Russia would come at a price, he cautions, pointing out that the recently signed agreements make only one definite commitment – for Turkey to allow Eni and Russia’s Gazprom to conduct a feasibility study for a by-pass line of their own.
They plan to construct that line, the South Stream gas pipeline, across the Black Sea to export Russian gas to Europe, by-passing Ukraine which has previously attempted to leverage its location on Russia’s gas export route to obtain cheap gas.
Russia is also hoping to co-operate with Turkey on other pipelines, including a second gas line across the Black Sea and an extension of an existing gas line south across Turkey to Ceyhan and on to Israel that would also allow for the development of gas-based industries at Ceyhan.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
At 30km long but just 700m wide at its narrowest, Istanbul’s Bosphorus strait is one of world’s most crowded and potentially hazardous waterways, where even with state-of-the-art radar monitoring, transiting ships are still obliged to take on a pilot.
Fringed with forests and villages on its upper reaches, and the palaces and mosques of Istanbul at its lower end, it is also one of the most beautiful.
It is no surprise then that with oil tanker traffic through the straits having more than doubled since 1995 and expected to double again in the next decade on the back of fast-rising oil production in Russia and the Caspian basin, Turkey is keen to provide an alternative export route.
“Traffic through the strait already presents an unacceptable risk to the population of Istanbul, and any oil pipeline that can relieve the pressure will be welcome,” says Burak Ozugergin, spokesman for Turkey’s foreign ministry which has long warned of the dangers posed by too much tanker traffic.
Turkey’s own proposed solution is the Samsun-Ceyhan, or Trans Anatolian pipeline, planned to carry oil from Turkey’s Black Sea coast, 550km across the country to the Mediterranean coast, bypassing the crowded Bosphorus.
Sponsored by a consortium of Turkey’s Calik Enerji and Eni of Italy it is designed to carry up to 1.5m barrels per day.
It is also expected to help kickstart a new petroleum refining, petrochemicals and manufacturing sector at the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, which Turkey has long harboured ambitions of turning into a major regional energy hub.
However despite presiding over a ground-breaking ceremony at Ceyhan in 2007, Calik and Eni have struggled to secure sufficient commitments of oil to ensure the line will be commercially viable.
Eni can supply oil from the giant Kashagan field in Kazakhstan which it is developing in partnership with Kazakh state oil company KazMunaiGaz, but the line also needs oil from Russian or Kazakh producers.
Support has been slow in coming, however, with Russia having long backed a rival project to build a pipeline through Bulgaria and Greece – a far shorter route, and Kazakhstan having long declined to commit to any of the competing schemes.
That situation has now changed with a recent agreement between Turkey, Italy and Russia committing the three countries to work together on this and other regional energy projects.
Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin also announced that he had secured Kazakh support for the project – a claim yet to be confirmed by Almaty.
“The agreement allows for Russian oil companies Rosneft and Tatneft to join the project either by committing oil or by becoming partners,” says Mustafa Aksoy, Calik Holding’s Director of Projects and Investments.
“With these two companies on board the project we expect to be able to make the final investment decision by the end of 2010,” he adds.
It is an important step, but there is still no definite commitment of oil to the Samsun-Ceyhan line. It also confirms that Moscow can make or break the project.
“Shipping oil by tanker through the strait is always going to be cheaper than any pipeline,” says John Roberts, Caspian analyst at Platts.
“Ultimately Russia controls the oil routes from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and only Russia can ensure the line has enough oil to make it viable.”
Such a move by Russia would come at a price, he cautions, pointing out that the recently signed agreements make only one definite commitment – for Turkey to allow Eni and Russia’s Gazprom to conduct a feasibility study for a by-pass line of their own.
They plan to construct that line, the South Stream gas pipeline, across the Black Sea to export Russian gas to Europe, by-passing Ukraine which has previously attempted to leverage its location on Russia’s gas export route to obtain cheap gas.
Russia is also hoping to co-operate with Turkey on other pipelines, including a second gas line across the Black Sea and an extension of an existing gas line south across Turkey to Ceyhan and on to Israel that would also allow for the development of gas-based industries at Ceyhan.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Athens set for anniversary of fatal police shooting
More than 6,000 police will be on the streets of Athens this weekend as the city marks the first anniversary of the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy.
The teenager's death at the hands of police in December last year sparked Greece's worst riots in decades.
In the run-up to the anniversary, dozens of schools and university campuses have been occupied by students preparing to mark the uprising.
Greece's government says it will have a zero tolerance policy towards violence.
"We want to send a clear message, we won't tolerate a repeat of the violence and terror scene in central Athens, we won't hand Athens to vandals," said Citizen Protection Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis.
Memorial service
Family and friends of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos will hold a memorial service on Sunday to mark a year since his killing.
They have appealed for calm, but posters have appeared in the capital saying: "We won't forget, we won't forgive."
Police said they expect about 150 foreign anarchists to arrive this weekend from Italy, France and other European countries.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has acknowledged that the weekend is a "crucial moment" for his new socialist government and for the nation.
"All of us, citizens, political leaders, parties, students representatives, we must protect Athens," he said.
Shop owners in the Greek capital are braced for trouble although some believe it will not be as bad as last year.
"Like all other shops on this street, we have put [up] steel shutters," said Athens music store manager George Stouraitis.
"But I don't think anything major will happen this year because the government is still young."
The BBC's Malcolm Brabant, in Athens, says police hope to repeat the success they had with an annual demonstration two weeks ago which normally ends in violence.
Officers managed to contain trouble by briefly detaining 300 youngsters, he says.
Two police officers have been charged with the murder and attempted murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos and their trial is due to begin in the New Year.
The teenager's death at the hands of police in December last year sparked Greece's worst riots in decades.
In the run-up to the anniversary, dozens of schools and university campuses have been occupied by students preparing to mark the uprising.
Greece's government says it will have a zero tolerance policy towards violence.
"We want to send a clear message, we won't tolerate a repeat of the violence and terror scene in central Athens, we won't hand Athens to vandals," said Citizen Protection Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis.
Memorial service
Family and friends of teenager Alexandros Grigoropoulos will hold a memorial service on Sunday to mark a year since his killing.
They have appealed for calm, but posters have appeared in the capital saying: "We won't forget, we won't forgive."
Police said they expect about 150 foreign anarchists to arrive this weekend from Italy, France and other European countries.
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has acknowledged that the weekend is a "crucial moment" for his new socialist government and for the nation.
"All of us, citizens, political leaders, parties, students representatives, we must protect Athens," he said.
Shop owners in the Greek capital are braced for trouble although some believe it will not be as bad as last year.
"Like all other shops on this street, we have put [up] steel shutters," said Athens music store manager George Stouraitis.
"But I don't think anything major will happen this year because the government is still young."
The BBC's Malcolm Brabant, in Athens, says police hope to repeat the success they had with an annual demonstration two weeks ago which normally ends in violence.
Officers managed to contain trouble by briefly detaining 300 youngsters, he says.
Two police officers have been charged with the murder and attempted murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos and their trial is due to begin in the New Year.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Turkey: Ottoman mission
By Delphine Strauss
In one of Istanbul’s artier quarters, a second-hand bookshop sells leaves torn from an old school atlas that depict the dominions of the Ottoman empire, all neatly labelled in a flowing script few Turks are now able to read.
The faded pages are a reminder of the heritage long rejected by the modern Turkish state as it sought to forge a new national identity and survive on the frontline of 20th-century geopolitics. Just as the social reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the secular republic, presented European culture as the standard of civilised behaviour, so foreign policy became firmly west-facing as Turkey sought shelter from the Soviet power on its border.
Now, however, the ruling Justice & Development (AK) party is re-engaging with territories once ruled by the sultans, from the Balkans to Baghdad, in a drive to return Turkey to a place among the leadership of the Muslim world and the top ranks of international diplomacy.
Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister and architect of the policy, rejects the expansionist tag of “neo-Ottoman” bandied about by AK critics, preferring his well-used slogan, “zero problems with neighbours”. The US and the European Union praise this unobjectionable aim: to act as a force for stability in an unstable region.
Turkey has long mattered – as Nato ally, friend of Israel, EU applicant and energy route to the west. But its growing economic strength and diplomatic reach give it influence over some of the toughest issues facing Washington and other capitals: from frozen conflicts in the Caucasus to Iran’s nuclear ambitions to the threat of disintegration in Iraq. “We are neither surprised by nor disturbed by an activist Turkish agenda in the Middle East,” Philip Gordon, assistant secretary at the US state department, said in Ankara this month.
Yet the speed and scope of Turkey’s diplomatic endeavours have left both Turkish and western observers wondering whether it can juggle all its new interests. In a month of frenetic activity, Mr Davutoglu has staged a show of friendship with Syria, ending visa restrictions on a border once patrolled by Turkish tanks; paid a high-profile visit to Iraq’s Kurdistan region, long shunned as a threat to Turkish unity; and signed a landmark deal to mend relations with Armenia. “Today we, children of the Ottomans, are here to show interest in the development of Mosul just as our ancestors showed centuries ago,” Zafer Caglayan, trade minister, said as he opened a consulate in the northern Iraqi city last month. Turkish diplomats claim credit, in the last year alone, for mediating between Israel and Syria, hosting talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and liaising with Sunni militants in Iraq.
But Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a prime minister who scorns diplomatic niceties, has shown the potential for new friendships to damage old ones.
“Why is it that...a more prominent Turkey has, it seems, to come at the expense of its relations with Israel?” Robert Wexler, the US congressman, asked recently. US newspaper columnists went further, arguing that Ankara was undermining efforts to put pressure on Iran, or even that illiberal Islamists could no longer be trusted in Nato.
The virulence of the reactions reflects the value attached to Turkish support. Although no longer a bulwark against Soviet power, the threat of radical Islam has given Turkey new weight as a partner to channel western values to the Muslim world – and, by its western alliances, show that a “clash of civilisations” is not an inevitable result of religious difference.
Mr Davutoglu is touring European capitals this month, employing Ottoman-tinged rhetoric to persuade people that Turkey’s European vocation is unchanged. “You cannot understand the history of at least 15 European capitals without exploring the Ottoman archives,” he told an audience in Spain this week.
For Ankara, there is no question of changing orientation. “We have one face to the west and one to the east,” Mr Erdogan said last month as he signed trade deals in Tehran. Yet it is natural for Turkey to keep its options open, given the manifest reluctance in some EU states to admit it to membership. Ankara presents its new friendships as an asset to the EU, giving it a partner to promote western aims in the region. The European Commission’s latest report on Turkey’s accession process endorsed that view, with praise for its foreign policy. But Brussels also makes clear that geostrategic importance cannot replace the domestic judicial, political and human rights reforms required to meet the criteria for membership.
Ankara’s focus, however, is on grander projects than box-ticking compliance with European legislation. A lack of enthusiasm for Herman van Rompuy’s appointment last week as president of the European Council reflects not just worries over his past opposition to Turkey’s candidacy but a preference for a heavyweight leader who would want Europe to play a bigger part on the world stage.
Ibrahim Kalin, Mr Erdogan’s chief foreign policy adviser, argues that Turkish activism is not a reaction to disappointments in the EU but simply “a fully rational attempt to seize new spaces of opportunity” – including the EU’s virtual absence from geopolitics.
Frictions with the EU may worsen, however, if Turkey engages in rivalry with countries used to seeing it as a junior partner. Western diplomats have noted Mr Davutoglu’s reluctance to support a French attempt at conciliation between Israel and Syria, for example, and say Mr Erdogan’s grandstanding in Iran “is definitely causing irritation”. Turkey thus needs to ascertain how much influence it has, what it is based on, and where new policies may upset old alliances.
Greater regional engagement is in part a response to changing balances of power. The coming American withdrawal from Iraq threatens a vacuum in which Turkey is one of the most plausible counterweights to Iranian influence – its credibility enhanced by its refusal to let the US use its territory to invade in 2003.
Ian Lesser from the Washington-based German Marshall Fund notes that ideas of a “Middle East for Middle Easterners” have been circulating for some time. “The crucial difference is that Turkey is now a much more significant actor in both economic and political terms, and Turkey’s Middle Eastern choices are, rightly or wrongly, seen as linked to the country’s own identity crisis.”
Foreign policy is certainly shaped by a growing affinity with the Islamic world, in a country where religious practice is becoming more visible and public opinion a greater force. Mr Erdogan’s comments on Gaza, or on Iran’s nuclear programme, appear both to recognise and reinforce views on the street: a survey by the GMF found that almost one-third of Turks – compared with only 5 per cent of Americans – would accept a nuclear-armed Iran if diplomacy failed.
Chief AK weapon in its drive eastwards, though, is not religion but trade. Exports to what the country’s official Turkstat agency classifies as the Near and Middle East account for almost 20 per cent of the total so far in 2009, up from 12.5 per cent in 2004. Turkish conglomerates are also stepping up investment in a region where their presence is considered benign.
“We don’t want a cultural bias against us,” says Sureyya Ciliv, chief executive of Turkcell, the mobile operator, which has interests in central Asia, Georgia and Moldova. Anadolu Efes, with almost 10 per cent of Russia’s beer market, wants to start producing non-alcoholic beer in Iran. Limak, a group centred on construction, is seeking projects in the Gulf, north Africa and Europe “east of Vienna”. “It’s a natural development,” says Ferruh Tunc, senior partner in Istanbul for KPMG, the consultancy. “Turkey’s position until the Soviet Union collapsed was unusual – it was like the last stop on a Tube line.”
Yet a previous initiative, reaching out to the Turkic-speaking world after the central Asian states won independence, left Turkey with excellent trade links but limited influence compared with China and Russia. Morton Abramowitz, a former US ambassador to Turkey, warns in this month’s Foreign Affairs journal that in the AKP’s latest diplomatic push as well, “despite the acclaim it showers on itself...symbolic achievements have far exceeded concrete ones”. More-over, Turkey’s opposition this spring to Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s appointment as Nato chief “alienated many Europeans by seeming to favour Muslim sensibilities over liberal democratic values”. Ankara had argued that Denmark’s role in the 2006 controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed had tainted him in the eyes of the Muslim world.
Can Ankara not reach out peacefully on all fronts, as it claims, without repercussions and a risk of overstretch? “You need very judicious fine tuning to be able to deliver this...The danger is of overplaying their hand,” says a western diplomat.
Mending fences with Armenia won praise in the west, for instance, but in Azerbaijan nationalists tore down the Turkish flag, viewing the move as a betrayal of old alliances. Baku may yet take revenge by demanding higher prices to supply gas.
The next test of Turkey’s new foreign policy will be Iran. The AKP claims its opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran is more effective because it delivers the message as a friend and trading partner. Turkey’s interests in trade with Iran are understood but Mr Erdogan may be pressed in Washington and Brussels to explain why he defends Iran’s nuclear programme as “peaceful and humanitarian” and lends the regime credibility rather than backing isolation.
Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform, a London think-tank, says: “As a long-standing Nato member and a country negotiating for EU membership, Turkey is expected to align itself with the US and Europe...As a regional power, Turkey will want to act independently and avoid antagonising its neighbours. It is not clear how long Ankara will be able to avoid tough choices.”
EU membership: ‘There is progress but it’s uneven’
Turkey’s shift in foreign policy reflects its ambition to assume greater responsibility as a regional power, writes Joshua Chaffin. It may also reveal frustration over another ambition that has been delayed, if not thwarted: Istanbul’s bid to join the European Union. Officially, the EU has been committed to full membership since 2005. Yet eight of the 34 negotiating “chapters” remain blocked as a result of Turkey’s long-running conflict with Cyprus. Meanwhile enthusiasm is faint in France and Germany, the bloc’s traditional centres of power. “There is progress but it’s very uneven,” one Commission official says.
The most recent update on negotiations came with the Commission’s mixed review of Turkey in last month’s annual enlargement report. Praise forits overtures to its Kurdish minority, and its agreement to reopen its border with Armenia, was tempered by concern over a fine imposed on one of Turkey’s leading media companies. Ostensibly for tax evasion, the $4bn (€2.7bn, £2.4bn) levy was likened by Olli Rehn, EU enlargement commissioner, to “a political sanction”. Some European diplomats expressed surprise, too, at recent comments suggesting Iran – under pressure over its nuclear programme – was being treated unfairly by the international community. Diplomats also say they do not expect breakthroughs from this week’s EU-Turkey ministerial meeting to discuss foreign affairs.
If it is accepted, Turkey will become the first predominantly Muslim EU member and also the most populous, giving it a sizeable number of seats in the parliament and threatening the power of Paris and Berlin. Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, displayed his opposition at an EU-US summit in Prague in May. After Barack Obama, on the eve of his first visit to Turkey, urged his hosts to “anchor” the country more firmly in Europe, Mr Sarkozy promptly suggested the US president mind his own business. Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has been more diplomatic,suggesting Istanbul be addressed instead as a “privileged partner”.
The creation of a full-time EU presidency and foreign policy chief seems unlikely to accelerate accession. In a 2004 speech, Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian prime minister chosen as president, said Turkey “is not a part of Europe and will never be”. Those remarks proved awkward in the run-up to his selection last week but – as Istanbul no doubt noticed – they did not cost him the job.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
In one of Istanbul’s artier quarters, a second-hand bookshop sells leaves torn from an old school atlas that depict the dominions of the Ottoman empire, all neatly labelled in a flowing script few Turks are now able to read.
The faded pages are a reminder of the heritage long rejected by the modern Turkish state as it sought to forge a new national identity and survive on the frontline of 20th-century geopolitics. Just as the social reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the secular republic, presented European culture as the standard of civilised behaviour, so foreign policy became firmly west-facing as Turkey sought shelter from the Soviet power on its border.
Now, however, the ruling Justice & Development (AK) party is re-engaging with territories once ruled by the sultans, from the Balkans to Baghdad, in a drive to return Turkey to a place among the leadership of the Muslim world and the top ranks of international diplomacy.
Ahmet Davutoglu, foreign minister and architect of the policy, rejects the expansionist tag of “neo-Ottoman” bandied about by AK critics, preferring his well-used slogan, “zero problems with neighbours”. The US and the European Union praise this unobjectionable aim: to act as a force for stability in an unstable region.
Turkey has long mattered – as Nato ally, friend of Israel, EU applicant and energy route to the west. But its growing economic strength and diplomatic reach give it influence over some of the toughest issues facing Washington and other capitals: from frozen conflicts in the Caucasus to Iran’s nuclear ambitions to the threat of disintegration in Iraq. “We are neither surprised by nor disturbed by an activist Turkish agenda in the Middle East,” Philip Gordon, assistant secretary at the US state department, said in Ankara this month.
Yet the speed and scope of Turkey’s diplomatic endeavours have left both Turkish and western observers wondering whether it can juggle all its new interests. In a month of frenetic activity, Mr Davutoglu has staged a show of friendship with Syria, ending visa restrictions on a border once patrolled by Turkish tanks; paid a high-profile visit to Iraq’s Kurdistan region, long shunned as a threat to Turkish unity; and signed a landmark deal to mend relations with Armenia. “Today we, children of the Ottomans, are here to show interest in the development of Mosul just as our ancestors showed centuries ago,” Zafer Caglayan, trade minister, said as he opened a consulate in the northern Iraqi city last month. Turkish diplomats claim credit, in the last year alone, for mediating between Israel and Syria, hosting talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and liaising with Sunni militants in Iraq.
But Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a prime minister who scorns diplomatic niceties, has shown the potential for new friendships to damage old ones.
“Why is it that...a more prominent Turkey has, it seems, to come at the expense of its relations with Israel?” Robert Wexler, the US congressman, asked recently. US newspaper columnists went further, arguing that Ankara was undermining efforts to put pressure on Iran, or even that illiberal Islamists could no longer be trusted in Nato.
The virulence of the reactions reflects the value attached to Turkish support. Although no longer a bulwark against Soviet power, the threat of radical Islam has given Turkey new weight as a partner to channel western values to the Muslim world – and, by its western alliances, show that a “clash of civilisations” is not an inevitable result of religious difference.
Mr Davutoglu is touring European capitals this month, employing Ottoman-tinged rhetoric to persuade people that Turkey’s European vocation is unchanged. “You cannot understand the history of at least 15 European capitals without exploring the Ottoman archives,” he told an audience in Spain this week.
For Ankara, there is no question of changing orientation. “We have one face to the west and one to the east,” Mr Erdogan said last month as he signed trade deals in Tehran. Yet it is natural for Turkey to keep its options open, given the manifest reluctance in some EU states to admit it to membership. Ankara presents its new friendships as an asset to the EU, giving it a partner to promote western aims in the region. The European Commission’s latest report on Turkey’s accession process endorsed that view, with praise for its foreign policy. But Brussels also makes clear that geostrategic importance cannot replace the domestic judicial, political and human rights reforms required to meet the criteria for membership.
Ankara’s focus, however, is on grander projects than box-ticking compliance with European legislation. A lack of enthusiasm for Herman van Rompuy’s appointment last week as president of the European Council reflects not just worries over his past opposition to Turkey’s candidacy but a preference for a heavyweight leader who would want Europe to play a bigger part on the world stage.
Ibrahim Kalin, Mr Erdogan’s chief foreign policy adviser, argues that Turkish activism is not a reaction to disappointments in the EU but simply “a fully rational attempt to seize new spaces of opportunity” – including the EU’s virtual absence from geopolitics.
Frictions with the EU may worsen, however, if Turkey engages in rivalry with countries used to seeing it as a junior partner. Western diplomats have noted Mr Davutoglu’s reluctance to support a French attempt at conciliation between Israel and Syria, for example, and say Mr Erdogan’s grandstanding in Iran “is definitely causing irritation”. Turkey thus needs to ascertain how much influence it has, what it is based on, and where new policies may upset old alliances.
Greater regional engagement is in part a response to changing balances of power. The coming American withdrawal from Iraq threatens a vacuum in which Turkey is one of the most plausible counterweights to Iranian influence – its credibility enhanced by its refusal to let the US use its territory to invade in 2003.
Ian Lesser from the Washington-based German Marshall Fund notes that ideas of a “Middle East for Middle Easterners” have been circulating for some time. “The crucial difference is that Turkey is now a much more significant actor in both economic and political terms, and Turkey’s Middle Eastern choices are, rightly or wrongly, seen as linked to the country’s own identity crisis.”
Foreign policy is certainly shaped by a growing affinity with the Islamic world, in a country where religious practice is becoming more visible and public opinion a greater force. Mr Erdogan’s comments on Gaza, or on Iran’s nuclear programme, appear both to recognise and reinforce views on the street: a survey by the GMF found that almost one-third of Turks – compared with only 5 per cent of Americans – would accept a nuclear-armed Iran if diplomacy failed.
Chief AK weapon in its drive eastwards, though, is not religion but trade. Exports to what the country’s official Turkstat agency classifies as the Near and Middle East account for almost 20 per cent of the total so far in 2009, up from 12.5 per cent in 2004. Turkish conglomerates are also stepping up investment in a region where their presence is considered benign.
“We don’t want a cultural bias against us,” says Sureyya Ciliv, chief executive of Turkcell, the mobile operator, which has interests in central Asia, Georgia and Moldova. Anadolu Efes, with almost 10 per cent of Russia’s beer market, wants to start producing non-alcoholic beer in Iran. Limak, a group centred on construction, is seeking projects in the Gulf, north Africa and Europe “east of Vienna”. “It’s a natural development,” says Ferruh Tunc, senior partner in Istanbul for KPMG, the consultancy. “Turkey’s position until the Soviet Union collapsed was unusual – it was like the last stop on a Tube line.”
Yet a previous initiative, reaching out to the Turkic-speaking world after the central Asian states won independence, left Turkey with excellent trade links but limited influence compared with China and Russia. Morton Abramowitz, a former US ambassador to Turkey, warns in this month’s Foreign Affairs journal that in the AKP’s latest diplomatic push as well, “despite the acclaim it showers on itself...symbolic achievements have far exceeded concrete ones”. More-over, Turkey’s opposition this spring to Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s appointment as Nato chief “alienated many Europeans by seeming to favour Muslim sensibilities over liberal democratic values”. Ankara had argued that Denmark’s role in the 2006 controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed had tainted him in the eyes of the Muslim world.
Can Ankara not reach out peacefully on all fronts, as it claims, without repercussions and a risk of overstretch? “You need very judicious fine tuning to be able to deliver this...The danger is of overplaying their hand,” says a western diplomat.
Mending fences with Armenia won praise in the west, for instance, but in Azerbaijan nationalists tore down the Turkish flag, viewing the move as a betrayal of old alliances. Baku may yet take revenge by demanding higher prices to supply gas.
The next test of Turkey’s new foreign policy will be Iran. The AKP claims its opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran is more effective because it delivers the message as a friend and trading partner. Turkey’s interests in trade with Iran are understood but Mr Erdogan may be pressed in Washington and Brussels to explain why he defends Iran’s nuclear programme as “peaceful and humanitarian” and lends the regime credibility rather than backing isolation.
Katinka Barysch of the Centre for European Reform, a London think-tank, says: “As a long-standing Nato member and a country negotiating for EU membership, Turkey is expected to align itself with the US and Europe...As a regional power, Turkey will want to act independently and avoid antagonising its neighbours. It is not clear how long Ankara will be able to avoid tough choices.”
EU membership: ‘There is progress but it’s uneven’
Turkey’s shift in foreign policy reflects its ambition to assume greater responsibility as a regional power, writes Joshua Chaffin. It may also reveal frustration over another ambition that has been delayed, if not thwarted: Istanbul’s bid to join the European Union. Officially, the EU has been committed to full membership since 2005. Yet eight of the 34 negotiating “chapters” remain blocked as a result of Turkey’s long-running conflict with Cyprus. Meanwhile enthusiasm is faint in France and Germany, the bloc’s traditional centres of power. “There is progress but it’s very uneven,” one Commission official says.
The most recent update on negotiations came with the Commission’s mixed review of Turkey in last month’s annual enlargement report. Praise forits overtures to its Kurdish minority, and its agreement to reopen its border with Armenia, was tempered by concern over a fine imposed on one of Turkey’s leading media companies. Ostensibly for tax evasion, the $4bn (€2.7bn, £2.4bn) levy was likened by Olli Rehn, EU enlargement commissioner, to “a political sanction”. Some European diplomats expressed surprise, too, at recent comments suggesting Iran – under pressure over its nuclear programme – was being treated unfairly by the international community. Diplomats also say they do not expect breakthroughs from this week’s EU-Turkey ministerial meeting to discuss foreign affairs.
If it is accepted, Turkey will become the first predominantly Muslim EU member and also the most populous, giving it a sizeable number of seats in the parliament and threatening the power of Paris and Berlin. Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, displayed his opposition at an EU-US summit in Prague in May. After Barack Obama, on the eve of his first visit to Turkey, urged his hosts to “anchor” the country more firmly in Europe, Mr Sarkozy promptly suggested the US president mind his own business. Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has been more diplomatic,suggesting Istanbul be addressed instead as a “privileged partner”.
The creation of a full-time EU presidency and foreign policy chief seems unlikely to accelerate accession. In a 2004 speech, Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian prime minister chosen as president, said Turkey “is not a part of Europe and will never be”. Those remarks proved awkward in the run-up to his selection last week but – as Istanbul no doubt noticed – they did not cost him the job.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.
Can Cyprus overcome its bloody history?
Chris Summers
More British soldiers were killed during the "Cyprus emergency" in the 1950s than have died in Iraq or Afghanistan. So why has it been forgotten and what hope is there of reuniting the island?
On Remembrance Sunday, about 500 relatives and veterans watched as a new memorial was unveiled in Kyrenia, in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, to recognise the 371 British servicemen who lost their lives on the island between 1956 and 1959.
The unveiling, and the laying of a wreath by the British High Commissioner, Peter Millett, sparked a diplomatic row, with President Demetris Christofias raising the matter when he met UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown a few days later.
One of the names on the memorial is Corporal Mervyn Whurr, 22, killed by a bomb on Kyrenia's Six Mile Beach in September 1956.
His sister, Barbara Hocking, from Millbrook in Cornwall, said: "My mum had a telegram saying he'd been injured, then she got another one saying he had an arm and a leg amputated. A few days later another telegram came saying he'd died."
Unlike those of troops killed in Afghanistan, his body, like those of most of the Cyprus casualties, was not flown home and lies in a cemetery at Wayne's Keep on the island.
Mrs Hocking was at the unveiling of the memorial, where she was joined by Margaret Moncur, whose brother 19-year-old Matt Neely, from Glasgow, was killed in 1956 by a bomb while doing his National Service.
Mrs Moncur said: "He loved his football, he was full of fun, playing jokes and was very popular with his mates.
"For some reason Cyprus has become a forgotten war."
The Cyprus High Commissioner to London, Alexandros Zenon, said the failure to consult the Cyprus government about the memorial was perceived as an "insult".
He said: "In principle we are not against a country honouring its soldiers who fell in service.
"The problem is that the memorial was built and unveiled in the occupied part of Cyprus. It could have been erected in the British sovereign base area.
"We also feel it's politically premature. I understand they want to honour them, but for Greek Cypriots the anti-colonial struggle is still a very sensitive issue."
In the late 1950s the British Empire was trying to cling on to the island, which remained a strategic location, especially around the time of the Suez crisis.
Greek Cypriot fighters belonging to an organisation called Eoka planted bombs and attacked British servicemen on and off duty.
Several civilians were also killed, including Catherine Cutliffe and her daughter Margaret who were shot while buying a wedding dress in Famagusta, although Eoka denied responsibility for that attack.
Eventually in 1960 Cyprus was granted independence, but tensions between the Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority grew during the next decade.
In July 1974 a Greek nationalist group, Eoka-B, led by Nikos Sampson, carried out a coup backed by the military junta in power in Athens.
Sampson promised to unite Cyprus with Greece in so-called "enosis".
Turkey sent its army to the northern part of the island, ostensibly to protect Turkish Cypriots.
The idea of enosis evaporated and the moderate Archbishop Makarios returned to power.
But the Turkish Army has remained ever since and the island is still separated, with a UN buffer zone running right through the heart of Nicosia, the world's last remaining divided city.
In 2004 the United Nations came up with the Annan Plan - named after the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan - which suggested a bi-zonal federated state.
But, although it was accepted by the Turkish Cypriots in a referendum, another poll in the south rejected it.
Cyprus was then admitted into the EU, which many Turkish Cypriots opposed believing it removed an incentive for the Greek Cypriot side to reach a solution.
But fresh momentum was injected with the election of Mr Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat, president of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).
Both are leftists elected on a platform of reconciliation.
Negotiations are ongoing, but one of the major stumbling blocks is the question of how to deal with Greek Cypriots who claim land and property in the north.
Some of this has been sold to some of the 6,000 British expats in northern Cyprus.
In what could prove to be a test case, a court in Cyprus ruled against a couple, David and Linda Orams, who bought land originally belonging to a Greek Cypriot, Meletis Apostolides.
There are fears that if no deal is reached before elections in the TRNC in April what Mr Brown referred to as a "unique opportunity" could be lost.
Mr Zenon said: "The likely opponent of Mr Talat is a hardliner and if he is elected, things will not be made easier. But we will not create artificial deadlines which, as with the Annan Plan, have proved disastrous."
Mr Talat himself, in an interview with the BBC, admitted: "If somebody who is not in favour of a bi-zonal solution is elected then the negotiations will not continue easily."
He said of the negotiations: "The positions of the two sides are not very close, but we are making progress."
Mr Brown recently renewed an offer to hand back just under half of the UK's sovereign base areas on the island - around Akrotiri and Dhekelia - if a deal could be reached between the two sides.
Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon in north London, feels the timing of the Kyrenia memorial was unfortunate.
He represents more than 3,000 Greek Cypriot constituents and recently led a debate in Parliament about the island.
Mr Dismore said: "Of course, there should be a memorial, but this is neither the time or place, at such a sensitive time in the talks.
"It just serves to remind Greek Cypriots of the UK's less than glorious role as the colonial power, when we are trying to be positive in our support for the talks."
But Mr Talat said the memorial was a "humanitarian" issue and should not have become "politicised".
Mrs Hocking said it was sad the memorial had led to a row and she said of her brother's death: "Was it worth it? The two governments are still not talking. Was it worth all those lives being wasted? It's just like Afghanistan."
More British soldiers were killed during the "Cyprus emergency" in the 1950s than have died in Iraq or Afghanistan. So why has it been forgotten and what hope is there of reuniting the island?
On Remembrance Sunday, about 500 relatives and veterans watched as a new memorial was unveiled in Kyrenia, in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus, to recognise the 371 British servicemen who lost their lives on the island between 1956 and 1959.
The unveiling, and the laying of a wreath by the British High Commissioner, Peter Millett, sparked a diplomatic row, with President Demetris Christofias raising the matter when he met UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown a few days later.
One of the names on the memorial is Corporal Mervyn Whurr, 22, killed by a bomb on Kyrenia's Six Mile Beach in September 1956.
His sister, Barbara Hocking, from Millbrook in Cornwall, said: "My mum had a telegram saying he'd been injured, then she got another one saying he had an arm and a leg amputated. A few days later another telegram came saying he'd died."
Unlike those of troops killed in Afghanistan, his body, like those of most of the Cyprus casualties, was not flown home and lies in a cemetery at Wayne's Keep on the island.
Mrs Hocking was at the unveiling of the memorial, where she was joined by Margaret Moncur, whose brother 19-year-old Matt Neely, from Glasgow, was killed in 1956 by a bomb while doing his National Service.
Mrs Moncur said: "He loved his football, he was full of fun, playing jokes and was very popular with his mates.
"For some reason Cyprus has become a forgotten war."
The Cyprus High Commissioner to London, Alexandros Zenon, said the failure to consult the Cyprus government about the memorial was perceived as an "insult".
He said: "In principle we are not against a country honouring its soldiers who fell in service.
"The problem is that the memorial was built and unveiled in the occupied part of Cyprus. It could have been erected in the British sovereign base area.
"We also feel it's politically premature. I understand they want to honour them, but for Greek Cypriots the anti-colonial struggle is still a very sensitive issue."
In the late 1950s the British Empire was trying to cling on to the island, which remained a strategic location, especially around the time of the Suez crisis.
Greek Cypriot fighters belonging to an organisation called Eoka planted bombs and attacked British servicemen on and off duty.
Several civilians were also killed, including Catherine Cutliffe and her daughter Margaret who were shot while buying a wedding dress in Famagusta, although Eoka denied responsibility for that attack.
Eventually in 1960 Cyprus was granted independence, but tensions between the Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority grew during the next decade.
In July 1974 a Greek nationalist group, Eoka-B, led by Nikos Sampson, carried out a coup backed by the military junta in power in Athens.
Sampson promised to unite Cyprus with Greece in so-called "enosis".
Turkey sent its army to the northern part of the island, ostensibly to protect Turkish Cypriots.
The idea of enosis evaporated and the moderate Archbishop Makarios returned to power.
But the Turkish Army has remained ever since and the island is still separated, with a UN buffer zone running right through the heart of Nicosia, the world's last remaining divided city.
In 2004 the United Nations came up with the Annan Plan - named after the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan - which suggested a bi-zonal federated state.
But, although it was accepted by the Turkish Cypriots in a referendum, another poll in the south rejected it.
Cyprus was then admitted into the EU, which many Turkish Cypriots opposed believing it removed an incentive for the Greek Cypriot side to reach a solution.
But fresh momentum was injected with the election of Mr Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat, president of the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC).
Both are leftists elected on a platform of reconciliation.
Negotiations are ongoing, but one of the major stumbling blocks is the question of how to deal with Greek Cypriots who claim land and property in the north.
Some of this has been sold to some of the 6,000 British expats in northern Cyprus.
In what could prove to be a test case, a court in Cyprus ruled against a couple, David and Linda Orams, who bought land originally belonging to a Greek Cypriot, Meletis Apostolides.
There are fears that if no deal is reached before elections in the TRNC in April what Mr Brown referred to as a "unique opportunity" could be lost.
Mr Zenon said: "The likely opponent of Mr Talat is a hardliner and if he is elected, things will not be made easier. But we will not create artificial deadlines which, as with the Annan Plan, have proved disastrous."
Mr Talat himself, in an interview with the BBC, admitted: "If somebody who is not in favour of a bi-zonal solution is elected then the negotiations will not continue easily."
He said of the negotiations: "The positions of the two sides are not very close, but we are making progress."
Mr Brown recently renewed an offer to hand back just under half of the UK's sovereign base areas on the island - around Akrotiri and Dhekelia - if a deal could be reached between the two sides.
Andrew Dismore, Labour MP for Hendon in north London, feels the timing of the Kyrenia memorial was unfortunate.
He represents more than 3,000 Greek Cypriot constituents and recently led a debate in Parliament about the island.
Mr Dismore said: "Of course, there should be a memorial, but this is neither the time or place, at such a sensitive time in the talks.
"It just serves to remind Greek Cypriots of the UK's less than glorious role as the colonial power, when we are trying to be positive in our support for the talks."
But Mr Talat said the memorial was a "humanitarian" issue and should not have become "politicised".
Mrs Hocking said it was sad the memorial had led to a row and she said of her brother's death: "Was it worth it? The two governments are still not talking. Was it worth all those lives being wasted? It's just like Afghanistan."
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