Biden receives assurances on energy security around Cyprus

The details of discussions U.S. Vice President Joe Biden had during his Jan. 23 visit to Turkey with President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and other top Turkish executives, as well as his talks with the Israeli and Greek Cypriot leaders, keep emerging. Apparently - both in his face-to-face talks with Erdo?an and in telephone conversations with Israeli and Greek Cypriot leaders - Biden received assurances regarding energy security, with or without a settlement to the problem of power-sharing between Turkish and Greek Cypriots.

Turkish Cypriot Finance Minister Birikim Özgür said that because Israel recently started laying an undersea electricity line to extend the interconnected electricity grid to the Greek Cypriot side of the island, Turkey might soon start works on a prestigious project including the Turkish Cypriot side, thus connecting the EU-member island of Cyprus to the system. Özgür said the suspended pipeline project that started providing northern Cyprus with fresh water from Turkey made it relatively easy and feasible to lay down an electricity connection between the island and Turkey, achieving added interdependence between the island and the international community of nations through Turkey, which he said would be a great contribution to peace.

"Interdependence" was the deeply feared word that impeded the laying of a water pipeline between Turkey and the island in the 1960s. If Archbishop Makarios had agreed during his landmark 1962 visit to Turkey to undertake such a project, would there still be a Cyprus problem today? Would the Greek Cypriots have started the bloody Christmas 1963 onslaught on the Turkish Cypriots? Would such a project even have been possible with the technological capabilities of the time? 

Now, for the past few...