The Secretary-General never came to hand over a framework in writing

Opinion Antonio GuterresCyprus problempolitics The Secretary-General never came to hand over a framework in writing Triths Olgkin 1536x833 Relevant News Paphos Hospital patients forced to carry medical equipment by hand 28 July 2026 Israel’s supremely irritating cheek 28 July 2026 The Secretary-General never came to hand over a framework in writing 28 July 2026 Aristos Michaelides 28 July 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber From the moment the Secretary-General’s visit was announced, the same old arguments flared back up, the ones that have resurfaced like clockwork for the past nine years. The Guterres Framework. “Where we left things at Crans-Montana.” And everyone spins it however suits them. Whatever suits their own petty politics. Even now, of all moments! So, at the very least, let’s go into this new round of activity properly informed. I’ve chosen to republish here some words from Andreas Mavroyiannis, interviewed by Frixos Dalitis in an interview published in Phileleftheros on 12/2/2024. It helps us understand what this Guterres Framework actually is, and more importantly, exactly where things stood at Crans-Montana and what caused it to collapse. Mavroyiannis speaks here as an eyewitness, not as some party hack briefed second-hand by Norwegians, Turks, or anyone else. Here it is: Q: So you believe the UN Secretary-General’s framework could have been signed as a strategic agreement? Mavroyiannis: Not exactly. But what could have happened, and what Guterres tried to do on that last night, was for all of us together to draft the bones of a strategic agreement. All of us together, based on what he’d said the previous week and on all the work that had gone into it. Q: So not the framework as a framework, then? Mavroyiannis: We’d have put together a text based on the Secretary-General’s proposals, the six points. You know, a lot of inaccurate things get said about this. Guterres never handed over a framework in writing. (…) The only written proposal he gave, on the last night, was on the specific issue of implementation, because he’d made that a precondition of his proposal to scrap the Guarantees. In the end, he asked us to try to draft something together that, if we agreed on it, would become a strategic agreement. That’s exactly why there’s all this argument about what the framework actually is. Everything being said about it is misleading. Guterres floated some thoughts on 30 June, in various conversations he had. In the end, he laid them out more formally at dinner, as a six-point package. The next day, even though we’d all agreed to work on his ideas, it became clear we didn’t all share the same understanding or the same reading of them. UN officials tried to put something in writing, but the rough draft they produced wasn’t accepted as accurate by anyone. We were then given clarifications by the Secretary-General. It was a live, evolving process, and only right at the end did he suggest we try to capture the essence of it and draft a strategic agreement. Q: So these six points everyone keeps citing were never actually written down? Mavroyiannis: No, they were never given in writing by the Secretary-General. They’re described in narrative form in his report of 28 September 2017. Q: And on the critical night, we got to the issue of the Guarantees and didn’t move forward… Mavroyiannis: Yes. The moment the Secretary-General raised scrapping the Guarantees, then-President Nicos Anastasiades said immediate abolition. The Secretary-General said yes. And then Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu came back saying he wouldn’t accept it. Q: Some say Anastasiades’s intervention, raising immediate abolition of the Guarantees at that particular moment, was a mistake. Mavroyiannis: No, it wasn’t a mistake. That’s what the Secretary-General had proposed, and he confirmed as much. The issue was that Çavuşoğlu said he wouldn’t accept abolition of the Guarantees, only a future review of the system. The UN Secretary-General told him: “I’m sorry, you told me you wouldn’t propose it yourself, but if I proposed it, you’d accept it within the framework of the whole package.” Çavuşoğlu held his ground: “No, no. That’s not right. I simply expressed a willingness to discuss the package.” Without Guterres responding, Çavuşoğlu added that wherever the troops ended up staying, they’d have to stay forever. That’s what brought the whole thing crashing down. The atmosphere may have been poor, all sorts of things may get said, but that’s the substance of it. The shift on the Turkish side wasn’t enough to produce an agreement. But it wasn’t so rigid, either, that it would have ruled out continuing the process, something for which, as I said above, we all bear responsibility. 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