Foreign Ministry spokesman Konstantinos Koutras stated the following in response to journalists’ questions regarding statements made yesterday by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, following his meeting with Commissioner Štefan Füle, in Ankara, in which there is erroneous reference to the results of the recent (23 September 2013) Venizelos-Davutoglu meeting in New York, on the margins of the UN General Assembly:
“As Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos has repeatedly stressed, Greece agreed, in response to a relevant request from the President of the Republic of Cyprus and in order to facilitate direct contact between the Greek Cypriot negotiator and the Turkish government, to a meeting, on the corresponding level, of the Secretary General of the Greek Foreign Ministry with the negotiator for the Turkish Cypriot community – a community provided for by the 1960 Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus – and not, of course, with a representative of the pseudo-state.
Such meetings, on the highest level, in fact, of the President of the Republic of Cyprus with the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community, take place very frequently, without ever raising an issue of indirect recognition of the pseudo-state, which is, in any case, prohibited by the relevant explicit resolution of the UN Security Council.
As the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister has also repeatedly stressed, these meetings neither constitute an indirect quadrilateral conference, nor prefigure such a thing, which has been ruled out by the Cypriot and Greek governments, which respect and support the UN Secretary General’s mission of good offices.”
November 9, 2013