Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar on Monday morning announced that he had agreed to attend an “informal dinner” with President Nikos Christodoulides and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Tatar was speaking at Ercan (Tymbou) airport following his return to Cyprus from his meetings in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last week, and said Guterres had suggested the idea to him at their meeting on Saturday.
He said his response had been “positive”, so long as there was “no formality in the context of talks on the Cyprus problem”.
To this end, he said that based on the lack of common ground found between Cyprus’ two sides, “an environment could be created for a 4+1 informal consultation” – involving the Turkish Cypriots, Turkey, the Greek Cypriots, Greece, and Guterres, “to discuss how the future of Cyprus would be shaped”.
Speaking on the matter to CyBC, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said “information is now converging” on the potential holding of a meeting, and that the government is waiting on official confirmation from the UN.
“This is an important development which cannot be downplayed,” he said.
The latest move for a meeting between Christodoulides and Tatar comes after a haphazard handling of prior initiatives for such a meeting to be held in August.
Christodoulides had announced a planned meeting at an event in Deryneia, saying it had come about thanks to “our own persistent efforts, both in the direction of [Guterres] and the European Union”.
He went on to say he had been “working tirelessly to break the deadlock” which had seen the Cyprus problem unmoved since the collapse of talks at Crans-Montana in 2017.
However, Tatar responded the following morning saying that he had not been invited to such a meeting, and that even if he had been invited, he would not attend.
Letymbiotis rationalised this, saying that no formal invite had been sent by the UN and that both Christodoulides and Tatar would have been “sounded out” over the prospect of a meeting.
Christodoulides, he said, “has been frequently in contact with Guterres of late”.
He said they had met and spoke in Paris when they were both in the city for the Olympic Games opening ceremony, and that in this and other conversations between the two, the sounding out over a potential meeting occurred.
He added that Tatar had also been sounded out over the prospect, “and very publicly gave his answer … that he is refusing to meet”.
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