Sources close to KIBRIS POSTASI newspaper said tensions rose yesterday in the routine round table meetings of the two sides’ political parties held under the auspices of the Slovakian Embassy in the buffer zone. Vatan Mehmet reporting the story notes that issues relating to a bi-zonal bi-communal federation arose when the GC parties EDEK and the Greens wanted the reference of ‘an acceptance of a bi-communal agreement with EU aquis’ to be put into the joint text. The CTP representative at the meeting rejected this by saying the two leaders had not agreed on such a matter and responded by saying by criticising that the two GC parties were opposed to a bi-zonal federation.
After this, EDEK members became angered and asked the CTP member to ‘be careful when he spoke about EDEK’. CTP Member Muhittin Ozsaglam walked out of the meeting because he felt the ‘diplomatic’ nature of the meeting had been lost to tension.
Present at the meeting were the CTP, TDP, KSP and BKP from the north and AKEL, EDEK, EPALXI, EDI and DIKO from the south. The UBP and DP parties were not present.
Ozsaglam later on his Twitter feed noted that a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation based on UN parameters was a solution to be supported for the island. He said they owed it to the two leaders to be supportive of an equal solution and when defending those values one needed to be respectful of diplomatic rules and to one another.
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