The Turkish Cypriot side is ready to suspend plans to sign a continental shelf delimitation agreement with Turkey if the Greek Cypriots agree to postpone drilling for natural gas, Turkish Cypriot leader Dervish Eroglu’s special representative Kudret Ozersay told the Cyprus Mail last night.

Ozersay’s words came just hours after announcement that a deal between Ankara and the breakaway state on maritime borders was in the making, and appear to show a willingness on the part of the Turkish Cypriot leadership to defuse growing tensions between Turkey and the Greek Cypriots.

“They [the Greek Cypriots] are forcing us to take steps we normally wouldn’t prefer to take. We are proceeding, but we don’t want to do it,” Ozersay said, referring to the Turkish Cypriot plan to sign a continental shelf deal with Ankara in response to Greek Cypriot insistence that drilling for natural gas between the Cypriot and Israeli coast will go ahead in the coming weeks.

He added that it was “not possible for Turkish Cypriots to sit back and watch what is happening”, but said he hoped all sides would back down to allow ongoing reunification talks to reach a conclusion before prospecting and drilling began. He said timing of the planned drilling was “unfortunate” as came at a time when Greek and Turkish Cypriot negotiators were seeking to bridge convergences on core issues ahead of a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the end of October.

The representative insisted that the issue of natural resources, and how their benefits were shared, was “an issue of sovereignty”, and that statements from the Greek Cypriot side aimed assuring Turkish Cypriots that they would receive their fair share of the benefits were “meaningless”.

Ozersay added that emerging crisis over carbon resources in the eastern Mediterranean showed just how urgently the Cyprus problem needed to be solved.

“We are importing the problems of the Middle East into the Cyprus conflict, and this is very dangerous,” he said.