Nicosia: The meeting between the President of the Republic, Nikos Christodoulides, and the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community, Tufan Erhrman, began shortly after 4 pm (local time) on Wednesday. The Turkish Cypriot leader was the first to arrive at the site of the old airport in the Nicosia buffer zone at 3.55 pm, followed eight minutes later by President Christodoulides. The two leaders were welcomed in turn by Sergey Ilarionov, Chief of Staff at the UN Secretary-General's Good Offices in Cyprus.
According to Cyprus News Agency, this is the first meeting between the two leaders since the visit of UN Secretary-General Ant³nio Guterres to Cyprus at the end of July. During his visit, Guterres announced his intention to convene an expanded meeting on the Cyprus issue, provided there was sufficient preparation in terms of confidence-building, methodology, and substantive content, though without setting a specific date.
The negotiators from both sides, Menelaos Menelaou and Mehmet Dana, also met last week to prepare for the meeting between the two leaders. 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 due to Turkish intransigence. The latest round of negotiations, in July 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana, ended inconclusively.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, whose term nears its end, announced he would convene another meeting in a broader format, after adequate preparation, but gave no timeline. He secured to that end the consensus of both sides and of the guarantor powers. Mara Angela Holgun, Guterres' Personal Envoy on Cyprus, is tasked to engage with the parties. Executive Vice-President Raffaele Fitto acts as the European Commission's Special Representative for Cyprus, succeeding EU special envoy Johannes Hahn.