Cyprus After Annan: Next Steps Toward a Solution (WPF Report #37)

President Rauf Denktash of the unrecognized Turkish Republic of North Cyprus has refused to agree to the "Annan Plan," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s elaborate solution to the Cyprus problem. At the same time, plans have been made for the Republic of Cyprus’ accession to the European Union, and its entrance into the Union in May 2004. Because of Denktash’s rejection of the Annan Plan and the prospective running out of the reunification clock in 2004, the WPF Program on Intrastate Conflict at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, assisted by the Kokkalis Program, organized a meeting in September 2003 where Greek and Turkish Cypriots, Greek and Turkish officials, and the principal negotiators from the United Nations, the EU, the U.S., and Britain gathered at the Kennedy School to discuss what could be done to improve the island’s future prospects. The results of that meeting are summarized in Robert I. Rotberg, Cyprus after Annan: Next Steps Toward a Solution, WPF Report 37 (Cambridge, MA, 2003).

The participants in the meeting in September were hoping that the parliamentary elections in late December 2003 in northern Cyprus would be decisive. In the event, the parties supporting Denktash’s rejectionist posture and those favoring the revived, pro-Annan Plan, each won 25 seats. As of early 2004, Mehmet Ali Talat, the leader of the largest opposition faction and a participant in the Program’s 1998 meeting, was forming a government and attempting to wrest control over the negotiating process from Denktash.