President Nikos Christodoulides said on Saturday evening that he will meet with UN Secretary General’s personal envoy Maria Angela Holguin Cuellar on Monday.
President Christodoulides was replying to journalists’ questions upon his arrival at an event in Pafos.
Asked whether he will receive Holguin next Monday he replied in the affirmative, saying that “I will have a meeting with Holguin, who is coming from London.”
He added that “it will not be the only meeting, there will be another meeting and I understand that she will be in Cyprus for about a week, ten days.”
President Christodoulides also said that the meeting will not be a ceremonial one, noting that “we will talk 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.”
The President said that he also discussed the issue at length with European Commission President
Ursula von den Leyen who was in Cyprus on Thursday and Friday and “as far as we have been informed, 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.”
Invited to say how he interprets the reference by the European Commission President, in relation to the Cyprus issue, that Europe will stand by Cyprus, President Christodoulides said that “it is a very positive reference. Of course, I also know how it will stand by Cyprus specifically during the private meeting we had, we had the opportunity to discuss at length.” He added that he would not like to elaborate in public.
What I am interested in, the President continued, is the outcome and in this context “we should do more work and say less in public.”
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: Cyprus News Agency
