Cyprus reunification talks gather momentum Second meeting scheduled for 31 March.

A solution in reunification talks between the Greek and Turkish communities on Cyprus is starting to look possible as new momentum gathers pace. A second meeting in two months between Nicos Anastasiades, the president of the Republic of Cyprus and leader of the Greek Cypriots, and Dervis Eroglu, the leader of the Turkish community, has been scheduled for 31 March. The chief negotiators – Andreas Mavroyiannis, Cyprus’s former ambassador to the European Union, and Kudret Özersay – have been holding weekly meetings since the talks resumed on 11 February, after a freeze of 18 months.

Mavroyiannis visited Ankara and Özersay travelled to Athens two weeks ago (27 February) in a choreographed move to ensure that Greece and Turkey, the two guarantor powers of a reunified Cyprus, are fully involved in the process. Groups of technical experts are dealing with the major issues – governance and power-sharing, EU matters, security and guarantees, territory, property, and economic matters. And in a departure from previous failed talks, the two sides will explore from the start where concessions in one area could lead to compromise in another.

Last week in Brussels, the two chambers of commerce on the island released a joint statement saying that a settlement “will benefit all sectors of the economy and will bring gains for Cypriots on both sides of the island”. And Pieter Van Nuffel, the personal envoy of José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, is expected in Cyprus this week.

One tense area is freedom of movement, on which the Turkish Cypriot side believes that a final settlement will require permanent derogations from EU law that are proof against legal challenge. But this is anathema to the Greek Cypriots and could also present a problem for the Commission.

In the Greek part of the island, reaction to the renewed negotiations has been muted as attention focuses on the break-up of Anastasiades’s government coalition and the possible threat to the eurozone bail-out that probable delays to the privatisation programme could represent. Four ministers from the Democratic Party (Diko) refused to follow instructions from their leader, Nicolas Papadopoulos, to resign, and it is unclear whether a reshuffle will go ahead as planned later this week.

Diko is generally seen as more hostile to the idea of a compromise solution; Papadopoulos’s late father, then president of Cyprus, campaigned against the Annan plan in 2004, on the eve of the republic’s accession to the EU. On Monday (10 March), Panikos Demetriades resigned as governor of the central bank, after disagreements with Anastasiades.