President Nikos Christodoulides and UN envoy María Ángela Holguín described their meeting as good and constructive. The meeting opened a round of talks on Cyprus for Holguín, days before UN Secretary-General António Guterres meets Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on Saturday.
During the meeting, which lasted about an hour, Christodoulides set out his ideas on how efforts to solve the Cyprus problem could move forward. He had done the same when he met Erhurman a week earlier.
The government described the meeting as very good. Foreign Minister Konstantinos Kombos, Government Spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis and Greek Cypriot negotiator Menelaos Menelaou also attended.
Both Christodoulides and Holguín kept their comments brief afterwards. Asked by a journalist, Holguín said the United Nations was continuing its efforts to make progress on the Cyprus problem. All eyes are now on what her next contacts will produce. She has already arranged to meet Menelaou.
Nicosia has welcomed the wider UN effort, particularly by Guterres himself. The Cypriot side does not see it as a coincidence that a short UN Secretariat statement on Tuesday, about Guterres’s meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, listed Cyprus first among the topics discussed.
Information reaching Nicosia about Guterres’s contacts on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where Cyprus is among the issues he is raising, reinforces that view.
Everything, however, depends on Turkey. It remains the decisive factor in making the progress Guterres has asked for so the process can move forward, and it shows no willingness to shift from its position in favour of a “two-state” solution. In his speech to the General Assembly, Erdogan repeated the reference he makes every year. It may be nothing new, but it shows Ankara’s negative stance.
Further developments cannot be ruled out before the end of the week, when the direction of Guterres’s effort will become clear.
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