President Christodoulides welcomed the major effort being made by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to restart negotiations on the Cyprus problem, following Guterres’s press conference at the end of his visit to the island.
Christodoulides said he was keeping three things from the discussion. Guterres, he said, is fully committed to the UN resolutions, and added that there was a positive response from all sides towards convening an expanded meeting.
Christodoulides said work would begin immediately with María Angela Holguín and Raffaele Fitto to bring about the expanded meeting, with the aim of restarting negotiations. He said the sides were not starting from zero but were preserving the negotiating acquis, adding that he would like to see even better results going forward. He said the substance of the Cyprus problem had been discussed at the meeting.
Christodoulides’s comments came after Guterres told journalists he would continue working towards a solution to the Cyprus problem, pursuing a five-plus-one meeting following this week’s separate and joint talks with Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman.
Speaking at the press conference, Guterres said the new meeting would be convened only after adequate preparation on confidence-building, methodology and substance, taking into account convergences already achieved, and gave no date for it.
He said both leaders had assured him of their determination to keep working with Holguín, and that many Cypriots he had met during his visit wanted their leaders to compromise and walk “that last mile” towards a settlement.
Guterres also called on both leaders to intensify work on confidence-building measures, stressed the need to respect UNFICYP’s mandate in the buffer zone and along the UN-delineated ceasefire lines, and said he was counting on the continued support of guarantor powers Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
He said the United Nations could not impose peace but remained fully committed to supporting Cyprus at what he called a crucial moment for the island and the wider region.
Guterres noted that previous rounds of UN-led talks on Cyprus were held in Geneva and Crans-Montana in 2017, Berlin in 2019, Geneva in 2021, and New York and Geneva in 2024 and 2025. His visit this week was the first to Cyprus by a serving UN Secretary-General in 16 years.
