Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis on Thursday informed his Cypriot counterpart Constantinos Kombos about the meeting he had held with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres earlier in the week.
Gerapetritis had travelled to New York for discussions ahead of Greece’s one-month term as the UN security council’s rotating president in May, and had said after the meeting with Guterres that “we had a very extensive discussion which included, among other things, the Cyprus issue and the upcoming enlarged meeting”.
Greece began a three-year term as a non-permanent member of the security council at the start of January.
The enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem is set to take place in the Swiss city of Geneva next month, with UN under-secretary-general for peacebuilding Rosemary DiCarlo having completed a tour of the region ahead of the meeting.
While in Cyprus, she had met both President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, with the former saying he had suggested to her “five specific proposals” but not specifying what they are.
“The holding of the enlarged conference is a positive development. From there, what I conveyed to DiCarlo is that what is important is that there is a positive result. It is precisely within this context that I suggested five specific proposals in relation to a positive result through the enlarged conference,” Christodoulides said.
Tatar told her that the “sovereign equality and equal international status of the Turkish Cypriot people must be accepted” for there to be constructive steps to be taken towards a solution.
“The Turkish Cypriot people are the primary element in Cyprus and have an inherent right to sovereignty, and I conveyed those vital rights at the meeting,” he said.
After leaving Cyprus, DiCarlo met Gerapetritis in Athens. Gerapetritis told her a solution to the Cyprus problem is an “absolute priority” for his country, and insisting on a bizonal, bicommunal federation, in line with UN security council resolutions.
She then travelled to Ankara, meeting Turkish deputy foreign minister and European Union affairs director Mehmet Kemal Bozay, who was deputising for Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who was on the day in Pakistan.
The enlarged meeting in March will see both Cyprus’ sides as well as representatives of the island’s three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN, convene to discuss the Cyprus problem.
