United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (Unficyp) chief Colin Stewart is to brief the UN Security Council on the latest state of the Cyprus problem on Thursday.

Stewart will address a closed Security Council session in New York, with his speech given to coincide with the writing of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ latest annual reports on the state of Unficyp and the UN’s Good Offices on the island.

It also comes hot on the heels of the submission of a report by outgoing UN envoy in Cyprus Maria Angela Holguin, written about her six-month tenure in the role and her quest to find common ground between the island’s two sides.

Holguin and Guterres are also set to hold a meeting on Thursday in New York to discuss her findings.

In addition, Holguin is set to meet with Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who are both in the United States to attend the Nato summit which is taking place in the country’s capital Washington DC.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit on Wednesday night, with the former making a brief reference to Cyprus in his statements thereafter.

He is quoted by Greek newspaper Kathimerini as having said Cyprus “cannot remain divided much longer” and that talks aimed at reunifying the island “should resume”.

Cyprus aside, the meeting focused on bilateral relations between Greece and Turkey, as well as other regional and global matters.

Erdogan told Mitsotakis Turkey is “maintaining its efforts to promote the spirit of solidarity with Greece based on good neighbourly relations” and called for a “necessary intensifying” of “positive actions” to put an end to conflicts in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine.

The pair will next meet in September in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Meanwhile, Mitsotakis is set to meet Antonio Guterres in New York on Friday to discuss Greece’s accession to the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member next year, as well as the Cyprus problem.

Erdogan is not scheduled to meet Guterres while in the US but did meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

He was also close to front and centre in the “family photo” of all the Nato leaders taken on Wednesday, standing between British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

Mitsotakis stood in the second row directly behind Erdogan, flanked by Olaf Scholz and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.