Cyprus' president urged citizens to respect the results of yesterday's referendum to reunite their island after 30 years of division, joining a steady stream of voters to cast his "no" vote. The Turkish Cypriot leader, also voting against the plan, complained that Cypriots were being "kicked around" and pushed into a premature vote.
Chances of approval by both sides of the island in separate, simultaneous referendums are slim because of the plan's required compromises: limiting refugees' rights to return, equal sharing of political power, uprooting dozens of villages.
Rejection of the plan -- an unprecedented appeal from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the people to impose an entirely new political structure after leaders could not agree -- by voters on either side could make for a frosty May 1 entry to the EU for Cyprus.
PHOTO: AP
"I appeal to everyone, whatever the result, there should be no celebrations. Don't blacken the day with incidents," President Tassos Papadopoulos told reporters after voting in his hometown of Pano Deftera, about 25km south of Nicosia. "We will move forward united, as the people of Cyprus -- Greek and Turkish Cypriots -- deserve a better future."
Recent polls have indicated 65 percent to 70 percent of Greek Cypriots would reject the plan. Turkish Cypriot voters in the north, however, were expected to approve it, despite the vehement opposition of their leader, Rauf Denktash. To them, the plan is seen as a way to ease poverty that has come with their international isolation since the Turkish invasion in 1974 that divided the island. Only Turkey recognizes the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state.
Denktash told reporters Cypriots didn't really know what they were voting on. A frequent complaint on both sides of the island was that there was too little time for people to understand the 220-page plan and its 9,000 pages of annexes. "We don't know what surprises the plan will spring on us," he said after voting.
He criticized the international community for pushing the referendums on Cypriots. The EU as well as the US and British governments have pressed hard for passage of the UN reunification plan, which was finalized less than two weeks before yesterday's vote. Cypriots have been warned the world isn't interested in revisiting the reunification subject anytime soon if they reject the plan, and they've been tempted with promises a positive response would earn them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
"This could not have been done in Europe because they are treated as civilized people," he said. "We are Cypriots; we can be pushed around, kicked around and told what to do."
The plan envisages a federation of two politically equal states, one for the 643,000 Greek Cypriots and one for the 180,000 Turks and Turkish Cypriots in the north, under a weak central government. The Turkish area would be reduced from 37 percent of the island to 29 percent, requiring entire villages to be uprooted and the homes to be returned to the original Greek Cypriot owners.
The number of foreign troops -- currently 40,000 Turks and 6,000 Greeks -- would be gradually reduced to a maximum of 6,000 by 2011 and 1,600 by 2018.
The main Greek Cypriot objections are that the plan limits the right of Greek Cypriot refugees to return to homes they fled when the island was divided, while allowing tens of thousands of Turkish settlers introduced to the occupied north since 1974 to remain.
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