UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced in February his intention to invite all sides to a five-plus-one informal conference in Geneva to explore if common ground existed to negotiate a solution.
With the Covid-19 pandemic as a backdrop, the Cyprus issue was characterised by an interlocking set of relations between multiple conflicting parties that finally cleared a rocky path towards the Geneva conference from April 27 to 29, 2021.
It had taken four years since the failure at Crans-Montana to get there, that is everyone sitting in the same room. Guterres suggested at one point that the UN was open to hearing alternative visions for the future of Cyprus if the same vision was shared by the parties involved. Nicos Anastasiades and Ersin Tatar were the protagonists with the foreign ministers of Greece, Turkey and Britain.
The long road to Geneva 2021
After an intense three days in Geneva with the guarantor powers, the UN said there was not enough common ground for Cyprus negotiations to re-start but they would try again in the near future, according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
He said that the Turkish Cypriots feel that talks on a bizonal bicommunal federation (BBF) framework have been exhausted while Greek Cypriots feel that the talks should continue from where they left off in Crans-Montana in 2017 based on a federation. He added that Turkish Cypriots believe they have inherent sovereign equality, and the solution should be based on two states.
“The truth is that, in the end of our efforts, we have not yet found enough common grounds to allow for the resumption of formal negotiations in relation to the settlement of the Cyprus problem,” Guterres said. “But I do not give up”.
Both sides coasted along on the failure with the blame game in full swing and all Guterres was left to say was that it had been agreed to continue the dialogue, “with the objective of moving in the direction of reaching common ground, so as to allow for the start of formal negotiations” but with both sides now sitting in polar opposite positions, it would be a tough nut to crack.
In September, Tatar and Anastasiades met Guterres for a lunch on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. The only new thing on offer was the menu and perhaps the possibility that Guterres would appoint a new envoy as Jane Holl Lute was moving on.
The appointment of a new envoy became the new mantra on the Greek Cypriot side because there was nothing else to look forward to. In October, Anastasiades wrote to Guterres pleading for a new envoy but the UNSG obviously did not see the point at that moment in time. Indeed, it would take him another two years to get around to it.