Greek FM responds to criticism over his role in Cyprus talks

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias attributed last week’s stalled negotiations over yet another round of negotiations for a solution to the long-standing Cyprus problem to Ankara and the Turkish government.

He spoke on the sidelines of an international summit on the Mideast problem, an event that took place without an official Israeli representation.

Kotzias, who came up for heightened criticism by certain local and Cypriot media over the following days, with the political affairs magazine Politico, in fact, laying blame at his feet for some of the Geneva talks’ failure.

In a statement on Sunday, evening he deflected the criticism by saying that “it is reasonable for those (critics) who are the voice of their master, the Turks, to believe that a success in Geneva would mean our surrender to the Turks… If we legitimized their rights to intervention and ability to occupy a portion of Cyprus. We have a different opinion,” he said