Time for UN envoy to wake up to Cypriot games

Over the past more-than-half-a-century of the history of Cyprus peacemaking, Greek Cypriots have been applying a rather intriguing tactic: Never accept anything, but pretend to. It takes years for international mediators to discover the mental setup of Greek Cypriots and often they start getting a realistic picture only after they are ordered to pack up and move on.

If, let's say, from Hugo Gobi's time (1980-1984) till Alexander Downer's recent term, the post-Cyprus duty assessments of the United Nations special envoys are to be considered, there are plenty of signs about how late they were in realizing the "as if negotiating" or "as if talking federation" tactics of the Greek Cypriots.

This week, legendary Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denkta? was commemorated on the third anniversary of his move to eternity. Once he explained to this writer the mentality of the Greek Cypriots with an interesting analogy: "You demand a sack of potatoes. Greek Cypriots give you a dirty potato sack, empty. Until you discover that you just received an empty sack, they convince everybody that they gave you what you wanted, but you are still objecting." It was an interesting remark and initially I just could not understand what Denkta? was saying, or what was the correlation between a potato sack and a federation.

"We very much wanted them accept a federal resolution believing we would have a more efficient share in governance, more security and a chance to look into the future with confidence. They said they agreed to a bi-zonal and bi-communal federation in 1977, for decades still trying to understand what is in the federation sack they agreed to. It is empty!" Denkta? added, and I understood.

All through the Gambari process (July 8, 2006 - June 2012)...