Even though the general tactics of media communication and polls remains steady in an effort to form the resistance of the Cypriot people against the Annan plan, by interpreting it as an indication of fear for change, the next stage of our membership process is to deal with the negative points of the plan. Not to conduct negotiations but on the contrary to delay them. The most significant of these points is neither the constitutional one, nor the economic one, but the territorial one. The territorial point should be chosen by the Cypriot leadership, because it constitutes the weakest point of the Turkish side. Even though we may not liberate our occupied territories, we have to use it in a positive way. Since in this plan we have nothing to gain whereas the other side has only to lose as regards the territorial, the initiative rests on us. And this is not for us to gain not even a meter of land but to bring the opposite side up to a limit point which does not allow it to accept the plan as a result, but only as a basis for negotiations. For, even at this strategic point what is important is not space but time.

The parallel process of this open tactics is the creation of a positive context in the European Union. And indeed we see that as we are getting closer to the cutoff date there are more and more positive elements for membership, irrespective of the so-called solution to the Cypriot issue. In this way, pressure and extortions which we have gone through lose their dynamics step by step and allow us to take initiatives with the current data in the domain of the strategic combinations.

However, in order for us to reach our goals we have to avoid the separation of the refugees’ element. Because this is exactly the goal of the two-map strategy. We must not accept any differentiation and we must remain united. It is our weakest point from a sentimental point of view and our opponents know this and try to use it to our detriment. For this same reason the territorial issue remains the strongest point of our counterattack. If all of us manage to understand that indeed there is no solution as regards the territorial and our mere goal is our membership then the weak point will indeed become strong.

The total effort of the adverse forces is setting time pressure on the Cypriot Republic to accept an unacceptable plan in the framework of membership. Whereas we all now know that there is no correlation; while there is no substantial shaping of the plan; and the whole plan does not offer anything but a division of the island at the refugee level. From an objective and strategic point of view the plan does not constitute the last chance of the negotiations, but the last move of our opponents before our membership to the European Union, because they know that not only will this benefit us but that it will also give us a new and stronger context of real negotiations. The Annan plan allows Americans as well to maintain their Mediterranean strategy and Brits their bases under the pretext of the guarantor power. Though, to us the plan offers nothing. Therefore, the only right stance is to take initiatives not of passive defense ones, but of dynamic resistance by changing the battle field by using the temporal dimension of the territorial point.