United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin on Monday pledged to “continue working and having hope to resume the talks” to solve the Cyprus problem.

Speaking after a meeting with Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, she said she had discussed “the process” with him in addition to the tripartite meeting he will hold with President Nikos Christodoulides and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York on September 27.

“That is why I came here, to prepare and report to [Guterres] how things are,” she said, adding that she and Tatar had also discussed bicommunal technical committees and “the importance of trying to bring people together for the future”.

“This is what the committees are doing, and doing very well,” she said, before highlighting her forthcoming meeting with the bicommunal technical committee on youth on Tuesday.

She will also meet the chambers of commerce from the island’s two sides, hold separate meetings with negotiators Menelaos Menelaou and Gunes Onar, and visit cemeteries on both sides to inspect restoration work carried out by the bicommunal technical committee on cultural heritage.

Tatar, meanwhile, said the Turkish Cypriot side will “continue to monitor cooperation between the two sides and ways of building trust between the two peoples”, as well as “what kind of work can be done for the benefit of the peoples”.

He also drew attention to the “mixed-marriage problem” – which affects those born to one Turkish Cypriot parent and one non-Cypriot parent, typically a Turkish national, who are denied citizenship of the Republic of Cyprus because the authorities deem their parent was in Cyprus illegally.

On this matter, Tatar said “we explained that we do not accept discrimination among our citizens”.

He added that former Turkish Cypriot leaders had “also raised this issue”, but that “they, too failed to achieve any results”.

“I told [Christodoulides] in New York that this was not a waste of time. He said it is a matter for Europe. I immediately conveyed this to the Greek foreign minister [Giorgos Gerapetritis], but he remained silent. I conveyed concern about this issue to Holguin and requested that action be taken,” he said.

He then addressed the matter of conditions in prisons in the Republic, saying that “the prison conditions and the treatment of TRNC citizens in Greek Cypriot prisons have reached the point of cruelty”.

“I also conveyed this matter to [Holguin] and requested that she address it,” he said.

In this, he was referring to both Turkish Cypriots who find themselves in prison in the Republic, and Israeli property developer Simon Aykut, who was naturalised as a citizen of the ‘TRNC’ in 2013, during which time Tatar was serving as ‘finance minister’.

Holguin had met Christodoulides on Friday, saying after that meeting that the leaders of Cyprus’ two communities “have to make decisions” for there to be progress towards the implementation of new confidence-building measures between the island’s two sides.

Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis, meanwhile, said the September 27 meeting “once again proves the personal commitment of [Guterres] to the efforts to resume negotiations … within the agreed-upon framework”.

The tripartite meeting between Christodoulides, Guterres, and Tatar will take place during the UN’s “high-level week” – the week in which world leaders will make speeches to the UN’s general assembly.

Earlier that week, Christodoulides will address the general assembly on September 24.

After this year’s general assembly, 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 on October 19.

That election will see Tatar be challenged by former Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Tufan Erhurman, who advocates for a return to negotiations based on a federal solution.