An interview of Alfred de Zayas with Dimitris Konstantakopoulos
“The Annan Plan for Cyprus was a fraud and a betrayal of all UN resolutions. The so-called peace plan, Trump’s ultimatum to the Palestinians, is exactly the same.” This is what the distinguished American lawyer and historian Alfred de Zayas tells us. He is considered a global authority on issues of international law, human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocides. Professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and visiting professor at a number of universities, he was a UN Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order from 2012 to 2018, and under this capacity he dealt with many major international issues.
Professor de Zayas discusses the Palestinian issue at length, characterizes Israel a “terrorist state” and rejects Israeli and Western propaganda about what really happened on October 7, 2023, referring in particular to the revelatory research by Max Blumenthal: https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/ , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0gECjlpXF8 , https://braveneweurope.com/max-blumenthal-what-really-happened-in-israel-on-oct-7 . “Netanyahu’s place is in The Hague,” he characteristically says.
The Annan Plan for Cyprus was a monstrous, dystopian plan which, through a labyrinth of procedures, was taking sovereignty from the people of Cyprus to give it to three non-Cypriot judges appointed by the General Secretary of the UN, not even the Security Council, in reality by the US, Great Britain and Israel, while the new state would be forbidden to have armed forces for its defense. Those three foreign judges would concentrate in their hands the ultimate judicial, executive and legislative power. Cyprus would become a kind of post-modern protectorate. In a way this mechanism is reminding us of the way the Maastricht Treaty takes power from the European nations to transfer it to unelected organs of power representing in reality not some sort of Federation or Confederaiton, but the international Financial Capital and the US, while the elected European governments see their margins of deciding policy extremely limited.
The geopolical end – result of such a solution of the Cyprus conflict would be an enormous change of the strategic correlation of forces in Eastern Mediterranean to the advantage of the US and Israel.
The Annan plan was rejected by the vast majority of the Cypriot people in the 2004 referendum, in spite of the enormous pressure put by the US and the EU. Nevertheless, the Cypriot political leadership keeps it (with the support of Greece and the “collective West”), on the negotiating table to this day, in an even worse, more anti-democratic version. In 2016, the then US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland tried to reinstate it through a coup-like move, by convening a five-party conference (Britain, Greece, Turkey, Greek Cypriots, Turkish Cypriots) in order to create a new state along the lines of the Annan Plan, without having to organize a new referendum. This effort also failed. Today, there is a high probability of going back to such a solution of the Cyprus problem as the West wants to resolve both the Cyprus issue and the Greek-Turkish issues in a speedy way and at any cost, in order to bring Ankara into Euro-defense and the EU. One can find Professor de Zayas opinions on the matter of the Annan plan here: https://ifestos.edu.gr/a-principled-basis-for-a-just-and-lasting-cyprus-settlement-in-the-light-of-international-and-european-law-by-the-international-expert-panel-convened-by-the-committee-for-a-european-solut/ , https://www.alfreddezayas.com/Lectures/cyprusbrussels.shtml , https://www.defenddemocracy.press/legal-questions-regarding-the-cyprus-settlement-under-negotiation/.
A jurist, a historian, a poet and a translator of Rilke and Hesse into English, Alfred de Zayas has significantly influenced the way human rights protection is approached internationally by the science of law and justice, particularly through his participation in the UN Human Rights Committee and the subsequent influence of its work on national legislations.
Alfred de Zayas earned a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in Modern History from the University of Göttingen in Germany. He worked as a researcher at the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute and as a lawyer at the UN from 1981 to 2003. He is the editor and author of many books and articles, among them The Human Rights Industry and Countering Mainstream Narratives: Fake news, fake law, fake freedom. Ηe has been one of the fiercest critics of the US-British invasion of Iraq, the indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo, the illegal economic sanctions against various states, and the role played globally by the IMF and the World Bank. As a UN Independent Expert, he strongly supported Venezuela against the political and economic attacks it has faced because of the independent policies of Chávez and Maduro.
The American Professor explains why he believes the West is responsible for the war in Ukraine. He believes we are already living under a totalitarian regime, with Mossad, MI6, and CIA having infiltrated everywhere and possessing information with which they can blackmail all US and Western politicians, while the media hides and distorts reality.
De Zayas characterizes Trump as “very dangerous” and sees no other hope for the world than the rise of the Global South, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, etc. He recommends that we preserve our memory, not let history and memory, that is our truth and our identity to be erased. Unlike so many others who started out as radicals only to end up as conservatives, de Zayas, following the saying of Horace, which Kant had adopted and became the motto of the Enlightenment, Sapere Aude (Dare to Know) and his Christian faith has charted a course in his life that has brought him into opposition to our barbaric, prehistoric world. Today, he recalls the words of Faust and tells us: “We have an obligation to ourselves, our world, our religion, to remain optimistic, to fight for the good.”
