Greek ex-PM Tsipras details 2017 Cyprus talks in memoir

ATHENS

Former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras writes in his newly released book “Ithaca” that the U.N. framework put forward during the 2017 Crans-Montana talks could have served as the foundation for a fair and lasting peace on the ethcinally divided Cyprus.

In the chapter titled “Cyprus issue, one breath away from the solution,” Tsipras noted that the Syriza government chose not to intervene in the remaining internal dimensions of the Cyprus problem, focusing solely on the international security aspect.

Their priority was the withdrawal of occupation forces and the dismantling of the guarantor powers framework involving Greece, Türkiye and the United Kingdom.

He claimed that he had been told Türkiye might —under certain conditions— be open to discussing the abolition of the guarantor system in Cyprus and that the Turkish foreign minister was ready to meet with him.

However, former Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades believed this was merely a bluff.

Tsipras on Nov. 24 released a long-awaited memoir, 10 years after a traumatic management of the country's debt crisis and as he reportedly mulls a political comeback.

The former pony-tailed Communist youth leader, who came to power in 2015 as an anti-austerity firebrand, was eventually forced to negotiate a multi-billion-euro rescue with Greece's EU-IMF creditors.

Now aged 51, he has said he felt an "obligation" to "recount the events as I experienced them, to capture the conditions, the conflicts, the dilemmas, and the cost.”

The memoir, an epic 730 pages, is titled "Ithaki,” the Ionian island also known as Ithaca, where Tsipras in 2018 emphatically declared Greece's exit from its decade-long economic crisis.

Much of his ire recounting Greece's troubled financial odyssey is directed at former comrades, including then-finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

There are also tidbits about Tsipras' tightrope negotiations with world leaders, including Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin.

Tsipras resigned in 2023 after a crushing defeat to the conservative New Democracy party of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the current prime minister.