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Turkish intransigence not conducive to UN Chief’s initiative for a Cyprus settlement, Deputy Minister says

vassilis demetriades, deputy minister of shipping, 2020
Vassilis Demetriades, Deputy minister of shipping

The Turkish side’s growing intransigence is not conducive to the UN Chief’s efforts aiming at the resumption of UN-brokered talks over a jointly accepted and functional solution to the Cyprus problem, a Cypriot official said.

“We are watching with attention and concern the Turkish side’s rising intransigence and the projection of extreme positions which are not at all conducive to the UN Secretary-General’s initiative over a mutually agreed and functional solution to the Cyprus problem,” Vassilis Demetriades, Deputy Minister for Shipping, said addressing a funeral service in Pafos, for the remains of a person who went missing during the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.

He added that the Greek Cypriot side and President Anastasiades project positions based on international law, UN resolutions and decisions “with the aim of reunifying our country, ending the occupation and transforming Cyprus into a country of freedom, peace and democracy without the anachronistic guarantees of the past and intervention rights.”

Following the breakdown of UN-brokered talks in Crans Montana, Switzerland in July 2017, the UN SG in April 2021 convened an informal 5+1 meeting in Geneva on the future of the Cyprus talks. The Turkish side had put forward a two-state solution, as opposed to the position of the Greek Cypriot side that talks should resume from where they left off in Crans Montana, in 2017, over a bizonal bicommunal federal solution, with the UN Chief Antonio Guterres noting that not enough common ground was covered to enable formal talks to resume.

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