The longstanding Cyprus issue will be on the table in Geneva on Monday and Tuesday as the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will start informal talks with the President of Cyprus Nikos Christodoulides, the Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar and representatives of the guarantor powers Greece, Turkey, and the UK.
The meeting, set to take place at the UN Office in Geneva, aims to provide a platform for discussions on the way forward for the divided island.
The participants will first gather Monday evening for a dinner hosted by Guterres for the heads of delegations. The attendees will include Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis and UK Minister of State for Europe, North America and Overseas Territories Stephen Doughty.
On Tuesday, the informal discussions will begin with an expanded-format meeting preceded by a family photo. The session will bring together all parties to exchange views and explore potential pathways toward a peaceful resolution of the Cyprus issue.
The goal is for the informal enlarged meeting in Geneva is to be “a step towards restarting negotiations from where they had been interrupted in the summer of 2017,” government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said shortly after the Greek Cypriot delegation arrived in Geneva.
In a post on X, Letymbiotis said the Greek Cypriot side’s “compass” was the “hope and potential for a reunified, free and European homeland.”
He added that any solution determined would have at its core “respect and defense of international justice as per the United Nations map, UN security council resolutions and European Union values.”
Ahead of his departure for Geneva on Sunday, Christodoulides said every opportunity will be used to create the conditions for the resumption of dialogue and said he expected the informal enlarged meeting to mark the continuation of the initiative in this direction.
Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot administration have been insisting on a two-state solution to the Cyprus problem.
Tatar left for Geneva on Sunday with a stopover in Turkey where in an interview he said the Turkish Cypriot side “would not back down from the two-state solution model” and that the the federation chapter was closed.
The meeting follows an informal dinner Guterres hosted with Tatar and Christodoulides in New York last October, during which the decision was made to hold a broader informal gathering bringing together the two leaders, the foreign ministers of the “motherlands” and lower-level officials from the UK as the third guarantor state.
After that meeting Christodoulides expressed the hope that the UN-sponsored informal talks with the Turkish Cypriot leader could lead to the resumption of negotiations for a settlement in the divided island.
“There was an open discussion, at some points constructive. We have not heard anything new from Mr. Tatar, to be honest, but I am glad that the Secretary-General has decided to continue these informal meetings in an expanded form, as has been done in the past and at the same time in several proposals that we have made for Confidence Building Measures”, he pointed out.
Related: President Christodoulides Hopeful for a Restart of Cyprus Talks
