United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin is to return to Cyprus next month, and hold separate meetings with both Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman and President Nikos Christodoulides, according to reports on Tuesday.
The Cyprus News Agency reported that she will meet both leaders separately on June 8, and that she will discuss “both the substance and the confidence-building measures”.
After having meet both leaders, she will travel to both Greece and Turkey.
Holguin most recently visited Cyprus in January, holding a tripartite meeting with both leaders, and saying thereafter that no enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem could be held until more before “results on the confidence-building measures” between the island’s two sides are achieved.
An enlarged meeting, which would involve the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN, remains Christodoulides’ main aim, and he said earlier this month that he expects for the date of such a meeting to be announced “soon”.
He said at the time that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ “effort is being strengthened even more”, and that as such “we expect soon to have a positive outcome, which, for us, can be nothing other than the convening of an enlarged meeting at which the resumption of talks will be announced”.
The convening of an enlarged meeting will require the consent of the Turkish Cypriot side, with Erhurman previously having expressed reservations regarding the prospect of such a meeting being held before substantial progress is achieved in devising and executing confidence-building measures between the two sides in Cyprus.
He has said before that Christodoulides’ insistence on the matter constitutes an effort to circumvent the Turkish Cypriots.
“I want to emphasise this. What they actually understand by an enlarged meeting is this, I am sorry, but the Greek Cypriot leadership has always tried to address the Republic of Turkey, not the Turkish Cypriot side. This is being repeated,” he said at last month’s Antalya diplomacy forum.
Instead, he said, he would rather discuss matters directly with the Greek Cypriot side.
“What I said was, ‘let us meet face-to-face in Nicosia, and let us both make decisions on confidence-building measures which will make life easier for both the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot people,” he said.
The most recent enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem took place in July last year, before Erhurman’s election.
Since Holguin’s most recent visit, Erhurman and Christodoulides have met multiple times, most recently convening this month. At that meeting, they agreed to prepare what the UN described as a “plan for the conduct of religious services throughout the island”, with Erhurman later clarifying that
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