A meeting is being held this afternoon, Wednesday, 26 August, between President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman, their first meeting since the visit to Cyprus by UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
The meeting, at the offices of the United Nations Good Offices Mission in the airport area, within the buffer zone in Nicosia, is scheduled for 4pm.
This is the first meeting between the two leaders since the visit to Cyprus in late July by Guterres, who announced his intention to convene a meeting on the Cyprus issue in a broader format, but with sufficient preparation on confidence-building measures, methodology and substantive content. He did not, however, set a specific date.
The negotiators for the two sides, Menelaos Menelaou and Mehmet Dana, met last week in preparation for the meeting between the two leaders.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. Repeated rounds of UN-led peace talks have so far failed to yield results due to Turkish intransigence. The latest round of negotiations, in July 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana ended inconclusively.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whose term nears its end, announced he would convene another meeting in broader format, after adequate preparation, but gave no timeline. He secured to that end the consensus of both sides and of the guarantor powers. María Angela Holguín, Guterres’ Personal Envoy on Cyprus, is tasked to engage with the parties. Executive Vice-President Raffaele Fitto acts as the European Commission’s Special Representative for Cyprus, succeeding EU special envoy Johannes Hahn.
(Source: CNA)
