Anastasiades to underline readiness to attend informal meeting during Lute visit

President Nicos Anastasiades is expected to express on Monday during a meeting in Nicosia with the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy on Cyprus Jane Holl Lute his determination to attend the 5+1 informal meeting on Cyprus with the aim of paving the way for the resumption of substantive negotiations for a Cyprus settlement on the basis of the UN Security Council decisions and resolutions.

Lute arrived in Cyprus on Sunday evening for meetings with the two sides, in the framework of the preparations ahead of the informal meeting which the UNSG in Geneva on April 27-29. After her meeting with Anastasiades, Lute will have a meeting with the Turkish Cypriot leader, Ersin Tatar.

Along the same lines, to what he has written in his letter to the UN Secretary-General, by which he accepted his invitation for the informal meeting, Anastasiades is expected to underline to Lute the importance for the negotiations to resume from where they were suspended in Crans-Montana, with a view to find a viable and functional settlement on the basis of the work that has been done so far, the common understanding reached on November 25, 2019 in Berlin, the UN resolutions and decisions, the EU principles and values and the High-Level Agreements on the Cyprus problem.

Moreover, he will note the need for the EU to be present at the informal meeting, as Cyprus is and will remain an EU member state after a solution.

Lute’s meeting with Anastasiades will take place at 10.30am. The UN official will meet later on with Tatar.

Earlier she was meeting the UNSG’s Special Representative in Cyprus, Elizabeth Spehar and the members of the team on the Cyprus problem at the UNSG’s good offices mission, to be briefed on developments and meetings taking place on the ground.

During her stay on the island, Lute is also expected to meet with the two sides’ negotiators.

On Wednesday she will visit Athens to hold meetings with the Foreign Minister of Greece Nikos Dendias.

Dendias will visit on Monday Nicosia, and will hold talks in the afternoon with his Cypriot counterpart Nikos Christodoulides in the framework of the coordination between Nicosia and Athens on the Cyprus problem, ahead of the informal meeting, and on the issue of the EU-Turkey relations, ahead of the discussions on this issue by the EU Foreign Ministers and the European Council later on this month.