Guterres invites Tatar to New York meeting

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has invited Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar to meet him in New York, the Cyprus Mail learned on Friday.

High-level sources confirmed that the meeting will take place at the UN’s headquarters on April 5. Tatar will be accompanied to New York by his special representative Gunes Onar.

The invite came after Guterres met President Nikos Christodoulides in Belgium on the sidelines of the European Council summit last week.

The Turkish Cypriot side had within a matter of hours requested that Guterres also hold a meeting with Tatar, and Guterres promptly invited him to travel to Brussels the following day. However, Tatar was unable to travel to Brussels, and the New York meeting was scheduled instead.

It is expected that Tatar will inform Guterres about his position on the Cyprus problem, insisting on the acceptance of sovereign equality and equal international status of the island’s two sides as “essential” for the resumption of negotiations.

Additionally, it is expected that Tatar will tell Guterres that it is “no longer possible” for one of the two parties at the negotiating table to be accepted as a state and the other to be seen as a community.

He is also expected to say that it is “not possible” for him to accept a federal solution.

In addition, he will tell Guterres that UN Envoy Maria Angela Holguin “should have determined that there is no common ground” between Cyprus’ two sides.

Kibris also reported that sources close to Tatar said “the important thing at this stage will be to demand the accurate reporting of the facts in Cyprus to the UN Security Council.”

Tatar met Holguin a total of four times during her two trips to the island, including taking iftar with her during her most recent visit.

Holguin described her meetings with Tatar as “productive” and “very good”, and said “I hope we can continue here, and continue to understand the issue.”

Tatar had said after his most recent meeting that “I explained that we will not sit at the negotiating table again at the same point without taking anything, that negotiations on a federal basis have always been in vain, and that such a plan has been exhausted.”

Holguin also met President Nikos Christodoulides and other political leaders and civil society members on both sides of the island.

She has also travelled to Ankara, Athens and London to meet representatives of Cyprus’ three guarantor powers: Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom.