President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman agreed on Tuesday to meet again next week and to attend a bicommunal peace festival in Pyla together on Saturday. Christodoulides said Erhurman had accepted some of his 19 new proposals and rejected others.
“On some I received negative answers, on some I received positive answers,” Christodoulides told reporters after the meeting, which was held under UN auspices in the UN-protected area in Nicosia. On others, Erhurman had asked for more time to examine the issues, he said.
Christodoulides described it as a good meeting in which the two leaders exchanged further views on methodology, substance and confidence-building measures.
According to a UN statement, the leaders also agreed to attend upcoming meetings of the Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, the Technical Committee on Youth and the steering committee of the Civil Society Advisory Body together. They said they looked forward to the forthcoming visit of the UN Secretary-General’s personal envoy, María Ángela Holguín. The UN statement gave no details of what was discussed.
The festival in Pyla, on Saturday, October 17, will be held at the village’s futsal pitches and will feature food, drink, music and entertainment. Phileleftheros understands the invitation had been pending since before the leaders’ meeting in New York. Christodoulides had already accepted, and Erhurman confirmed on Tuesday that he would attend.
Asked whether the joint appearances were merely symbolic, Christodoulides said they were not. He said the youth committee, proposed by the UN when he took office, discusses the country’s future in the EU, while the cultural heritage committee had produced the most results of all the committees. One of his 19 proposals concerns its work, he said.
Proposals and confidence-building measures
On crossing points, Christodoulides said the issue was pending, as Erhurman wanted more information on new proposals the Greek Cypriot side had submitted within the 19 points.
Erhurman again raised his seven proposed confidence-building measures, which were discussed, Christodoulides said. Some had been answered long ago, others could not go ahead for specific reasons, and some were not confidence-building measures at all, he said. He added that the UN Secretary-General had seen both leaders’ responses at first hand when he was in Cyprus.
Asked whether opening the fenced-off area of occupied Famagusta and its port had been discussed and rejected, Christodoulides declined to go into detail while talks were ongoing. He said he would inform the public when the time came, but did not want to make statements that could raise false hopes or be read as declaring a deadlock.
UN envoy and enlarged meeting
Christodoulides said both sides had given the UN dates when they would be in Cyprus in October, and expected to hear within the next day or two when Holguín would visit.
He said the approaching end of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s term was a very important factor and was where Tuesday’s discussion had started. He told Erhurman that the UN Security Council was clear that a solution must stay within its resolutions, and that whoever is Secretary-General takes instructions from the Security Council, a point on which he said the two leaders fully agreed.
He denied that this meant there would be no enlarged meeting during Guterres’s tenure, saying efforts were continuing, which was why Holguín was coming, and that the Secretary-General had given his political commitment.
The aim was not just to hold an enlarged meeting, but one at which the resumption of talks would be announced, Christodoulides said. He said he had submitted a very specific proposal to that end, had shared it with Guterres and had discussed it again on Tuesday.
Asked whether a breakthrough was close, he said it depended on several developments. These included next week’s meeting, the envoy’s visit, his trip to Brussels on Wednesday evening, a discussion at the meeting of nine Mediterranean states with the European Commission president, and EU-Turkey relations.
COP31 and Libya
Christodoulides said he would attend the COP31 climate summit in Turkey, having received an invitation. He said the outcome had been achieved with the decisive help of partners, after diplomatic and political efforts made away from the spotlight, and that it also sent a message on the Cyprus problem.
Asked whether he feared unpleasant surprises at the summit, he said Cyprus was preparing for any development, which he did not rule out, and noted that the Republic of Cyprus is a member of the 27-member EU.
Asked about Libyan objections to Greek activities south of Crete and any possible impact on the Great Sea Interconnector (GSI), Christodoulides said he had only just heard of the matter from reporters and would not comment. He said the international community, the UN and the EU had made clear that the Turkish-Libyan memorandum was illegal and had no legal effect.
