President Nikos Christodoulides on Tuesday claimed some credit for the preparations now underway by the UN for an informal five-party conference on the Cyprus issue that will reportedly take place in March.

Undersecretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo met both leaders separately on Monday in Nicosia amid the remote possibility of a joint meeting.

But since the two leaders have not even held a second meeting on opening new crossings in four months, getting them to sit together with DiCarlo would have required more than a smidgen of goodwill.

Christodoulides hailed the preparations underway for the wider conference with the guarantor powers as “a positive event”, adding that “it was our own efforts that reached this result”. He said he had suggested five specific proposals to DiCarlo that would help achieve a positive outcome.

The conference is billed as informal because Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar will not sit for formal negotiations unless the “sovereign equality” of the north is recognised.

This is never going to happen.

The positive outcome Christodoulides is seeking is a resumption of talks from where they left off in Crans-Montana in July 2017.

This is what Tatar and Turkey say is never going to happen so we can expect that whatever proposals Christodoulides submitted will be rejected by the Turkish side. 

Tatar’s approach, whether he realises it or not, is a gift to the Greek Cypriot side.

His statements for years give the impression of someone suffering from sour-grapes syndrome. On Tuesday he reportedly said that Greek Cypriots accept the “separate state” by the mere fact that they visit the north. 

This type of clutching at straws for recognition comes across as bitter and disparaging to those who lost everything in 1974. Leaving aside the failings of their own leadership over the decades, the idea of someone with views like Tatar’s being part of a future political partnership doesn’t exactly inspire confidence among ordinary Greek Cypriots.

The UK’s former special representative for Cyprus Lord David Hannay said last week that Tatar’s current positions were “an insurmountable obstacle” despite the UN’s recent efforts.

With this in mind, all Christodoulides has to do is pretend he is doing everything possible to ensure movement, constantly make the right noises and putting forward proposals that appear reasonable on the surface but that he must know will be deeply anathema to the Turkish Cypriots and will block any progress. He already did this with the crossings, introducing new elements of “reciprocity”.

Former Disy leader Averof Neophytou warned on Monday against “hiding behind” the “unacceptable positions” of the Turkish side “with the sole aim of temporarily avoiding any cost in the moment”. In other words, ‘show genuine goodwill and don’t play games’.

“When we cannot agree on the opening of one or two crossings, what message are we sending to the international community and the international players who are positive about our positions?” he said.

Perhaps the five-party conference even if it does not end in progress, will at least indicate if there is goodwill from both sides to move forward or not.