The Government continues efforts for the restart of the talks for a just and viable solution to the Cyprus problem that would reunite the country, the Defence and Health Ministers said on Sunday in memorials of people who fell during the Turkish invasion of 1974.
Defence Minister Vasilis Palmas, in his speech at the memorial of Costas Pittas in Kornos in the Larnaca district, said that despite Turkey’s revisionist rhetoric, ‘we continue to make efforts for the restart of talks based on the agreed framework and United Nations Security Council resolutions.’
‘Through an honest and sincere dialogue’, he added, we seek a viable solution for Cyprus and offer Cypriots the prospect of peace, security, prosperity and progress.
Health Minister Michalis Damianos, in his speech at the memorial of Christodoulos Aresti Mazarakis in Mesogi, in Paphos, expressed the Greek Cypriot side’s readiness for a just, viable solution ‘which will ensure the reunification of the country and the complete independence and sovereignty o
f the homeland’.
The current state of affairs cannot be the future of our country, Damianos said, adding that, the Government was working to create the prospects for the resumption of substantive negotiations with the aim of finding a solution to the Cyprus problem always on the basis of the agreed framework and with the European principles and values as a cornerstone.
In the meantime, Head of Humanitarian Affairs for Missing Persons and the Enclaved, Anna Aristotelous, who delivered a eulogy at the memorial service for the fallen and the prayer for the missing persons of Afaneia village in Dali, in Nicosia, said that their sacrifice makes the will for liberation stronger.
Aristotelous on Saturday attended a church service in the occupied Maronite village of Ayia Marina Skyllouras, that has been uninhabited since 1974, where she reassured the community that President Nikos Christodoulides was by their side.
She also said that her office’s collaboration with the Maronite community would continue ‘with the
same intensity and consistency’, based, she said, on a human-centered approach, support, but also the struggle to keep the memory of the village alive for all Maronites.
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 last January 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