Christodoulides Ready to Discuss Crossing Points with Tatar ‘Next Week’

Speaking on the sidelines of an Energy symposium in NIcosia, he also made reference to plans for an enlarged meeting to be held over the Cyprus problem involving the country’s guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, plus the United Nations.

He said work towards holding such a meeting is “progressing as normal” and added that UN under-secretary-general for peacebuilding Rosemary DiCarlo will visit the island in due course to make further progress towards the meeting.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday night that a date for DiCarlo’s visit has not yet been announced, though a source close to the Turkish government told the Cyprus Mail on Thursday that the date being mentioned in diplomatic circles for the meeting to take place is January 5.

Reports had surfaced during last week’s Cop29 climate meeting in Baku that “all parties” had given their consent for an enlarged meeting to be held.

Plans for such a meeting had been afoot since Christodoulides met Tatar at an informal dinner in New York in October.

Christodoulides has in recent weeks been pictured in conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan both in Baku and at the European Political Community summit in Budapest, where he also sat around a coffee table with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

On Friday, Christodoulides made explicit reference to the importance of his visit to Azerbaijan, saying that his Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos’ meeting with his Azeri counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov is “a meeting which, beyond symbolism, is of particular essential importance.”

The meeting constituted something of a break with Azeri policy regarding the Cyprus problem in recent years, with the country’s President Ilham Aliyev having reportedly told Tatar he “attaches great importance to the TRNC” during a bilateral meeting, and having invited Tatar to attend a summit of the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS) in the country in July.

Azerbaijan had been seemingly flirting with recognition of the north, with Aliyev saying in June his country was making “diplomatic efforts” for the north to become an observer member of the OTS, with the north’s observer status having been agreed upon by the OTS’ leaders’ summit in 2022, but with parliamentary ratification from the five member states still pending.

He had added at the time that he supports the north becoming a full member of the OTS.

Source: Cyprus Mail