President Nikos Christodoulides on Wednesday evening said that “we must expect developments soon” on the Cyprus problem, after having held a meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in Brussels.

He described the discussion as “very substantive and very productive”, and stressed that he and Guterres “have a common goal … and this goal entails the substance of the Cyprus problem”, before adding that the substance of the Cyprus problem is “where our focus lies”.

Guterres, he said, “has the same view as us regarding the need for there to be substantive progress before the completion of his term in office”, which will expire at the end of this year.

He added that Guterres had also informed him about the discussions he had held during his recent trip to Turkey, as well as “how he sees the next steps”, before also saying that it is “important that he is in Brussels”.

On this front, Guterres had prior to his meeting with Christodoulides met European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and was due later in the day to meet European Council President Antonio Costa.

“The European Union has, and this is another point where we agree, it can help substantively in the achievement of progress, and by extension, in the resolution of the Cyprus problem,” he said.

He then added that “we must expect developments soon within the context ot the discussions we held”.

Christodoulides’ meeting with Guterres comes around a month after Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman had met him in New York, with Erhurman saying after that meeting that with regard to talks aimed at resolving the Cyprus problem, “this time it must be different”. 

“I shared with the secretary-general face to face my view that, especially in light of previous experiences and the disappointments suffered by Turkish Cypriots, what is important to me is not that the meetings are for the sake of meetings, but that this time, they are for the sake of reaching a solution,” he said after last month’s meeting. 

To this end, he said he “had the opportunity to share with him that we have developed our four-point proposal, based on his own frequently used phrase, ‘this time it must be different’”. 

Those four points, sometimes referred to as “preconditions” – a term Erhurman resents – foresee that the Greek Cypriot side accept political equality, time-limit negotiations, and preserve all past agreements, and that the UN guarantee that embargoes placed on the Turkish Cypriots be lifted if the Greek Cypriot side leaves the negotiating table again.