Erhurman: Conditions not yet met for expanded meeting

Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman said on Thursday that conditions for a new 5+1 meeting on the Cyprus problem have not yet been met.

Speaking after talks with President Nikos Christodoulides, which he commented on as being “better than the previous one,” Erhurman confirmed there was no trilateral meeting or 5+1 session planned on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Erhurman said Guterres’s remarks on Wednesday that “there is still a lot of work to be done” and “we cannot repeat the mistakes of the past” were significant.

He echoed his own perennial position that any expanded meeting must be results oriented rather than symbolic.

“At present, the conditions for a new 5+1 meeting have not been met,” he said.

He insisted that tangible progress on a Cypriot level between the two leaders must come first.

On the substance of Thursday’s meeting, Erhurman said the two leaders discussed the memorandum of understanding, the core of the Cyprus problem, and that Christodoulides had indeed presented new ideas, to which he responded with “his own views”.

He said any memorandum must avoid steps that “undermine trust”.

He cited the cancellation of two music festivals, a Barcelona football academy event, the Republic’s foreign ministry response to Turkish Cypriot representative Mehmet Dana’s meeting with foreign ambassadors in the buffer zone and decisions taken by the European Parliament.

Erhurman said the Turkish Cypriot side has now agreed on six of seven points raised by Guterres during his visit to Cyprus in July.

These cover new crossing points, demining, joint mechanisms for natural disasters and irregular migration, sport, EU citizenship for children of mixed marriages, and the structure of a civil society mechanism.

The sole outstanding issue, for the Turkish Cypriot side remains ‘new crossing points’.

He remarked that certain Greek Cypriot bodies had described the citizenship issue as a “humanitarian issue,” calling this “a small step forward.”

He however maintained that his view remains unchanged and that it as a human rights matter.

He said no agreement yet exists on confidence building measures or methodology, “not even on the first point of the four that we had raised.”

But he insisted the search for solutions would continue.

“For us, ‘no solution is a solution’ is not an approach,” he said.

Asked why the two leaders continue meeting despite the lack of outcomes, Erhurman said simply, “we meet to achieve a result.”

He described the leader’s sessions as ‘conversations’ rather than a negotiating table.

He concluded that he expected the New York meetings, which he will travel to next Wednesday, to produce “a roadmap for the process that will proceed.”