Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar’s rhetoric “will intensify even more” as October’s Turkish Cypriot leadership election draws closer, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said on Monday.

His comments come as the island’s two sides once again prepare for a round of meetings on the Cyprus problem, with diplomatic sources having informed the Cyprus Mail that United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin’s next arrival on the island has been “tentatively” scheduled for September 1.

As is customary, she will likely hold meetings with both Tatar and President Nikos Christodoulides while on the island, with those meetings taking place ahead of a planned trilateral meeting involving the pair and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York during the UN’s “high-level week” in September.

After that meeting, a further enlarged meeting, involving Cyprus’ two sides, the UN, and the island’s three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, is set to take place before the end of the year, likely after the Turkish Cypriot leadership election, which is set to take place on October 19.

He added that despite Tatar’s “intensifying” rhetoric, “we are approaching this meeting with the same constructive attitude, with the same disposition and sincere political will so that progress can be made”.

“What we desire, and what we seek, is for substantive negotiations to resume and for the arguments and positions of each side to be placed on the table of substantive negotiations,” he said.

Letymbiotis was asked on Monday whether the UN’s new special representative in Cyprus, now all but confirmed to be Senegalese diplomat Khassim Diagne, will be in place before the New York meeting, and said that “this is an issue which concerns the United Nations, but this is the goal”.

“From the very beginning, as the host country, we have agreed to the person who has been proposed, and we await the procedures which have already been initiated by the UN and the official announcements,” he said.

Then asked whether he is concerned about Tatar’s reaction regarding the resignation of Afzal Khan as the UK’s trade envoy to Turkey following a trip to the north, he said that “in no case can the defence of international law, of international legitimacy, be considered by anyone to be a tyrannical act”.

“It is exactly the opposite. It is the defence of sovereign rights, it is the restoration of law, and it is the defence of international legitimacy,” he said, adding that “this is what the Republic of Cyprus is doing through the diplomatic steps we have taken since the first moment of this illegal and unacceptable action by [Khan]”.

Tatar had described the “pressure” placed on Khan to resign as “a new reflection of the primitive and domineering Greek Cypriot mentality”.

“The fact that an elected MP was forced to resign from his position as the UK’s trade envoy to Turkey simply for engaging with the Turkish Cypriot people is a lesson for all who believe in democracy and equality,” he added, before going on to decry “the Greek Cypriot leadership’s fascist and anti-democratic behaviour.”