66. Telegram From the Embassy in Cyprus to the Department of State1
1168. Subject: Call on President Kyprianou April 30. Ref: State 107265.2
1. Confidential-Entire text.
2. This telegram concerns ongoing efforts directed at a Cyprus solution.
3. Summary. I called on President Kyprianou morning April 30 and carried out instructions reftel. The President asked me to inform my government that he is sincerely interested in finding common ground for a resumption of the intercommunal talks. End summary.
4. I met with President Kyprianou for approximately twenty minutes morning April 30 and carried out instructions para 14 reftel. As regards advance preparations for the meeting, the President said he did not wish to agree beforehand on what would be said in a communique following the meeting before the meeting had even been held. He impled that he considered this practice somewhat dishonest and said that he wanted to deal with matters very clearly and fairly.
5. Regarding the proposal that he meet alone with Denktash, the President said he had mentioned this to President Carter when he met with him last fall.3 His objective in seeking such a private meeting was not to deal the SecGen out of participation but rather to provide an opportunity for him and Denktash to have a private conversation so that they could say things to one another which would not be on the record. He did not envisage that such a meeting would necessarily be a very lengthy one.
6. When I made the point that we understood the SecGen might come to Cyprus only if he received some assurances of a successful meeting, the President said he disagreed with such an approach on the part of the SecGen. One couldn’t be certain that the meeting would be [Page 234] successful even before it took place. The only way this could happen would be if the SecGen wanted Perez de Cuellar to do the job for him and, if that were the case, it wouldn’t be necessary for the SecGen himself to participate. As regards a mediator or a Security Council mediation panel, the President said that, while he would have no objection to this approach, he assured me he would not press it.
7. He said he wanted a thorough exploration of the issues with Denktash and he was not interested in a purely ceremonial meeting. Only after going into the substance of the problem in depth did he feel it would be possible to make progress. He asked me to assure my government that he intended to have a full discussion with Denktash, that he was very sincere in this effort, and that he was genuinely interested in securing common ground for the resumption of the intercommunal talks.
8. The President obviously regards the effort to agree to a communique even before the meeting is held as a questionable practice, and told me he felt he should not be expected to mislead either his own people or the international community. One had to have the meeting first before coming to agreement on the wording of a communique.
9. Just before leaving, I told him I had heard very good things about Ambassador de Cuellar, and he indicated that he thinks very highly of him.
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Office of Southern Europe, Records of Counselor Nimetz, 1977–1980, Lot 83D256, Box 1, POL 2 Cyprus Group. Confidential; Immediate; Exdis. Sent for information to Ankara, Athens, London, Bonn, Ottawa, Paris, and USUN.↩
- In telegram 107265 to Nicosia, April 28, the Department instructed Stone to keep the upcoming summit between Kyprianou and Denktash on track and to underscore to both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders the importance both the United States and the United Nations attached to a successful outcome. The Department also reported on the meeting between Christopher and Pérez de Cuéllar in Washington on April 26. (Ibid.)↩
- See Document 59.↩