Guterres ‘realistic’ about Cyprus talks

By Ahval

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is realistic about the chances of progress in informal talks on the divided island of Cyprus, which started in Geneva on Tuesday following a four-years of hiatus.

Guterres has urged the Turkish and Greek Cypriot sides to be creative, his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told journalists on Tuesday, the UN said on its website.

Guterres, who held bilateral meetings with the two Cypriot leaders separately on the first day of the talks, will bring the parties together on Wednesday. They also include the foreign ministers of Turkey, Greece and the United Kingdom, the three guarantor powers of the island.

The UN is holding three days of meetings aimed at finding common ground between the two sides to resume peace negotiations. The last attempt to reunify the island collapsed in Crans Montana, Switzerland after a week of discussions in mid-2017.

Guterres will move forward based on the outcome of the Geneva meeting, Dujarric said.

“The Secretary-General will be encouraging them to move, to use diplomatic language in a sincere and frank manner,” he said.

Cyprus has been divided since Turkey invaded in 1974 in response to a brief Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting it with Greece. Numerous diplomatic efforts to reunify the Mediterranean island have failed.

The biggest chance for reunification failed in April 2004 when the majority of Greek Cypriots opposed a U.N. bizonal, bicommunal model in a referendum a week before the Republic of Cyprus joined the European Union on behalf of the whole island. Turkish Cypriots approved the plan.

Turkey and the pro-Ankara government in Turkish Cypriot-controlled northern Cyprus now reject the U.N.’s long-standing bizonal solution, saying that a series of talks on the model ultimately failed. Instead, they say the north should be given equal status as a legitimate state.

“Today, we will continue to explain why we want two sovereign equal states in Geneva,” Turkish Cypriot President Ersin Tatar said on Wednesday via social media.

Cenevre’de bugün yapılacak toplantılarda neden 2 egemen eşit Devlet istediğimizi anlatmaya devam edeceğiz.. pic.twitter.com/uErtbPNTng

— Ersin Tatar (@ersinrtatar) April 28, 2021

The Greek Cypriot-controlled Republic of Cyprus and Greece strongly oppose the two-state solution. They say the island’s future must be resolved with single sovereignty, single citizenship and single international representation under the U.N.-backed bizonal, bicommunal federation model.