Foreign Ministry spokesman Konstantinos Koutras made the following statement in response to journalists’ questions regarding an item in a Turkish newspaper according to which there is allegedly a difference of opinion between Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos as to the meeting of the negotiator for the Turkish Cypriot community with the Secretary General of the Greek Foreign Ministry, which is aimed at facilitating a direct meeting between the negotiator for the Greek Cypriot community and the Secretary General of the Turkish Foreign Ministry:
“On strategy and the handling of foreign policy, there is an absolute coincidence of views and agreement between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, who are in constant contact. If this is the case regarding all chapters of government policy, within the framework of the programmatic agreement of the two parties of the cooperation government, it is doubly regarding national issues.
As Mr. Venizelos has repeatedly stressed both in Parliament and to the news media, the Greek government – and thus the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, jointly – accepted the relevant proposal from the President of the Republic of Cyprus precisely to facilitate direct contact between the Greek community’s negotiator and the Turkish government.
It has been underscored repeatedly that the meeting concerns the representative of the Turkish Cypriot community – that is, the entity provided for by the 1960 Constitution of the Republic of Cyprus – and not the representative of the pseudo-state, the direct or indirect recognition of which is expressly prohibited by the relevant resolution of the UN Security Council.
Meetings between the leaders or representatives of the two communities take place continuously, without raising any issue of the indirect recognition of the pseudo-state. It has also been stressed repeatedly, by both the Greek and the Cypriot governments, that there is no question of any form of ‘quadrilateral’ configuration whatsoever, and neither will any such configuration be accepted.”
November 18, 2013