The UN Secretary General is looking forward to meeting the leaders in Cyprus in a trilateral meeting, late June – early July, either in New York or in Geneva, said Tuesday UN Secretary-General`s Special Adviser on Cyprus Alexander Downer, after his meeting with President Demetris Christofias.

“We want to make it a really useful meeting, a meeting that will move the process up a gear”, said Downer, adding that they will focus on that a little bit closer to the time, taking into account what will happen between now and then.

Downer did not exclude the possibility of further trilateral meetings after late June and early July, saying however that it’s premature to be speculating on that at this stage.

Replying to a question on reports that the Secretary General agrees that December is the end of negotiation process, the Special Adviser pointed out that Ban Ki-moon has never said that in public or privately to anybody, adding that he has spoken to him very recently.

He added that “the UN view has always been that this process needs to have a momentum, but that’s a different thing from saying that there should be a specific deadline.” He also clarified that the UN has not nominated a specific deadline and the Secretary General has not changed his position on the past 24 or 48 hours on that.

Asked about the possibility of a multilateral meeting, Downer said that nothing has been arranged at all and particularly in relation to timelines.

“Obviously at the end of these processes there should be some sort of an international meeting and both sides agree to that. Of course, the two sides have different approaches on how the international meeting will work and who will participate in the international meeting”, he said.

He noted that there are international issues, in particular the treaties of guarantee that involves Turkey and Greece and the UK as well.

Downer had meetings on Tuesday morning with President Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu. The Special Adviser said that he is looking forward to meeting with them together on Thursday, adding that they are pressing on with discussions on security issue. He also said that the representatives of the leaders are meeting this afternoon and so is the subcommittee on treaties that hasn’t met since the end of 2009.

Replying to another question, Downer said that the leaders will possibly meet again next week. He also said that the May 22 elections in Cyprus and the Jun 12 elections in Turkey have their own dynamic to the process.