The visit of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Cyprus aims to encourage the island’s leaders to resume negotiations towards a settlement, UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin said on Monday after meeting President Nikos Christodoulides.
Holguin said Guterres would arrive in Cyprus on Monday evening and that her meetings with Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman were intended to prepare the ground for his visit.
“The secretary-general has been promoting and supporting efforts to solve the Cyprus problem for almost ten years,” she said, expressing hope that “we will be able to make some progress.”
Holguin said she had previously visited Brussels and Ankara, where she had “good meetings and discussed all necessary issues that must move forward so that there is progress”.
Government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said Holguin had briefed Christodoulides on those contacts and expressed hope that Guterres’ visit would serve as “the stepping stone towards convening an enlarged meeting” on the Cyprus problem.
He said the secretary-general had launched the initiative in March but stressed that the government remained realistic about the prospects.
“Beyond that, we are realists and we are aware of the challenges ahead, mainly due to Turkish intransigence,” he added.
The spokesman said it remained to be seen how willing Turkey was to realign itself with international law.
“The UN secretary-general remains focused and is holding this visit at a time when there are developments in EU-Turkey relations,” Letymbiotis said.
He assured that if there was “even a slight glimpse of hope, a window of opportunity, we will take it”.
Letymbiotis said “the only solution the UN are seeking, the only solution up for discussion and for reaching a solution, is laid out clearly in the UN Security Council resolutions.”
“This is the solution the UN secretary-general is promoting. This is the solution the international community supports. This is the solution we are working towards,” he added.
Thus, he pointed out, “there cannot be any discussion … that deviates from the bizonal bicommunal federation with political equality, as set out in the relevant Security Council resolutions”.
Letymbiotis said the aim was to resume negotiations from where they broke off in 2017 in Crans Montana.
“Unfortunately, over the past few years, since 202, Turkey’s declared position is for a two-state solution,” he said.
The spokesman said everyone was waiting to hear Guterres’ thoughts and “how he sees his initiative maturing towards a multilateral conference, the aim of which will be to discuss the substance”.
He dismissed any agreement that would not be true to the agreed framework, which was also supported by the international community and the European Union, and was where the government drew its “red line”.
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