President to suggest measures to overcome impasse in talks

President Nicos Anastasiades will suggest confidence-building measures aimed at breaking some of the deadlocks concerning the Cyprus problem, it emerged on Saturday.

Anastasiades is to send a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres next week expressing his readiness to participate in an informal five-party summit on the Cyprus problem.

The Cyprus News Agency, citing reliable sources, reported that he will also propose confidence-building measures that will break some deadlocks and create a better climate.

Since the election last October of Ersin Tatar as the new Turkish Cypriot leader, the Turkish side has been reiterating it would no longer discuss a federal solution to the Cyprus problem, which is what the two sides had agreed on in the past, but a two-state solution.

Both Anastasiades and Tatar had stated readiness to participate in an informal five-party summit under the UN auspices so that all stakeholders – the island’s two communities and guarantors Greece, Turkey and the UK – could discuss a way forward.

Guterres’ special envoy Jane Holl Lute is expected to return to the island in mid-January after her last visit at the beginning of last December to prepare the ground for the summit.

The summit is expected to take place next month.