President Nikos Christodoulides on Tuesday welcomed Greece’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tasos Chatzivasileiou to Nicosia, with the pair engaging in a discussion on “the latest developments in political issues”.

Chatzivasileiou said after the meeting that they had also discussed “issues of common interests and trade relations between our countries”, pointing out that Cyprus is the third-most common destination for Greek exports.

He also wished Christodoulides “success and strength” ahead of the enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem set to take place in the Swiss city of Geneva next week.

The enlarged meeting on March 17 and 18 and will see both Cyprus’ sides as well as representatives of the island’s three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, and the United Nations convene to discuss the Cyprus problem.

Christodoulides said on Saturday during a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens that he will attend the meeting with a “clear plan”.

“I want to express publicly that I am going to Geneva with a clear plan, a clear design. We know very well what we want to achieve, and that is nothing more than the resumption of talks from where they were interrupted in the summer of 2017,” he said at a joint press conference at the Maximos Mansion.

Earlier, Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar had said the Turkish Cypriot side will act “in a constructive manner”, but at the same time insisted that formal negotiations to solve the Cyprus problem can only begin once the Turkish Cypriots’ sovereign equality and equal international status have been accepted.

Despite his firm red lines for negotiations to begin, however, Tatar was keen to stress that in the absence of negotiations, there is fertile ground Cyprus’ two sides to cooperate with one another.