Secretary of State Kerry Wants Advancement of Cypriot Reunification Discussions

Responding to Senator Robert Menendez during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee query, the U.S. Secretary of State claimed that he previously discussed the matter with Turkey.

Kerry commented, "I've had conversations with the Turkish foreign minister about it. Previously, now-Prime Minister Davutoglu, and we were working quite closely on it. My hope is we could get back to an equilibrium that would allow us to move forward. But we specifically discussed the economic zone, the ship presence, and the gas rights and so forth."

Kerry plans to travel to the region shortly and that the matter has been tabled with both Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkey. Senator Menendez declared, "Turkey has gone into the exclusive economic zone of Cyprus, put its ships there, followed with warships. It's pretty outrageous."

The Senator added, "This is another one of those elements of violating international norms and not having any real consequence of the message you send globally, is you can do that if you happen to be the stronger party."