President Chirstodoulides to meet with UN envoy

President of the Republic Nikos Christodoulides will meet with the UN Secretary-General's Personal Envoy Maria Angela Holguin Cuellar on the afternoon of 11 March, with whom, as he has said, he will discuss certain issues"very specifically", share some thoughts, while also expecting to be briefed by Holguin.

Arriving at an event in Paphos on the evening of 9 March, President Christodoulides had said that he will receive on 11 March the UN Secretary General's personal envoy on the Cyprus problem, who is coming from London, adding that "it will not be the only meeting, there will be another meeting and from what I understand she will be in Cyprus for about a week, ten days".

The UN Secretary General's personal envoy is also expected to have a meeting with the Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar during her stay on the island and will also have other meetings.

The meeting with the President of the Republic, as he had stated on 9 March, will not be a ceremonial one. "We will discuss very specifically. We have some thoughts that I want to share with her and I hope to be informed of developments that will bring us closer to our sole objective, which is to resume talks from where they were interrupted as soon as possible," he had noted.

The President of the Republic also said that he discussed the issue at length with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, who was in Cyprus, and "from what we have been informed, Mrs. Holguin will also visit European capitals, including Brussels, seeing the role that the European Union can play, and I hope, I repeat, that we will soon have positive developments."

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. Repeated rounds of UN-led peace talks have so far failed to yield results. The latest round of negotiations, in July 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana ended inconclusively. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed María Ángela Holguín Cuéllar of Colombia as his personal envoy for Cyprus, to assume a Good Offices role on his behalf and search for common ground on the way forward in the Cyprus issue. 

(Source: CNA)