Efforts to bring about a resumption of negotiations in earnest on the Cyprus problem have not been “frozen”, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Monday, with United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin having postponed her latest round of contacts until after the conclusion of next week’s Nato leaders’ summit in Ankara.

“The only thing which is certain is that the effort is not frozen, the effort continues. Holguin will go [to Brussels] on July 13. There is also the Nato summit. All processes are in full swing, with the aim of convening an enlarged meeting, during which the resumption of talks will be announced,” he said.

He then reiterated that “nothing has been frozen, this great effort continues”, before adding that “we support this great effort being undertaken by [UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres], and we hope that there will be a response from everyone”.

“We are at a very critical juncture. We are focusing, we are constantly having contacts, both in Cyprus and in New York, and at the European Union level, with one goal and one goal only, to have a positive result,” he said.

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He also offered himself credit for the progress achieved this far, saying that “this mobility began through our own efforts”, before saying that the EU has taken a “more active role” in the Cyprus problem in recent years, and highlighting Holguin’s initial appointment in 2024.

“We had said from the beginning that our goal was to connect potential developments in relations between Europe and Turkey, as Turkey considers progress on that issue as a strategic goal, to the Cyprus problem. There is progress in that direction. We hope to have the result we expect, which is nothing other than the resumption of talks,” he said.

Holguin is expected to meet European Council President Antonio Costa in Brussels on July 13, with the Ankara Nato summit coming with discussions regarding security guarantees in a post-solution Cyprus centring on the idea of those guarantees being provided through a Nato-based structure.

Those guarantees may come in the form of the new Cypriot republic’s accession to Nato, alongside the presence of Nato troops from Turkey, Greece, France, the United Kingdom and the United States on the island.

However, when questioned on the prospect of Holguin meeting Nato officials while in Brussels, which is also the seat of Nato’s headquarters, and of Nato-based security guarantees in a post-solution Cyprus, a Nato official told the Cyprus Mail that “there are no meetings planned with the envoy and the topic has not been discussed at Nato”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will host next week’s Nato summit, with the prime ministers of the island’s other two guarantor powers, Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece and Sir Keir Starmer of the UK also expected to attend, alongside Antonio Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

Starmer is likely to resign within ten days of that summit to be replaced as prime minister by outgoing Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, though this change is not expected to impact the UK’s stance on the Cyprus problem.

The question of whether progress is now “frozen” comes with it having earlier been expected that Holguin would return to Cyprus before the end of this month, but with the postponement of her meeting with Costa now set to push her return to the second half of next month.

As such, the planned enlarged meeting, involving the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN, which was initially pencilled in for the end of next month or the beginning of August, will now likely take place later in August at the earliest.