Lute to visit Athens and Ankara before end of May

The UN Secretary General’s Cyprus envoy Jane Hall Lute is expected to travel to Greece and Turkey later this week, according to diplomatic sources.

She will explore the possibilities of successfully convening a new informal 5+1 conference on Cyprus, as UNSG Antonio Guterres announced in Geneva on April 29.

Lute is expected to visit Cyprus for meetings with the two leaders after the May 30 parliamentary election.

A diplomatic source told the Cyprus News Agency that the positions expressed by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish Cypriot leadership don’t allow for much optimism.

The UNSG is expected to submit two reports on Cyprus at the beginning of July, one on Unficyp and the other on his good offices mission.

The 5+1 informal meeting in Geneva at the end of April failed to find enough common ground to allow for the resumption of formal negotiations to solve the Cyprus problem.

Guterres said he will convene another meeting of the 5+1 in the near future, again with the objective to move in the direction of reaching common ground to allow for formal negotiations to start.