Government Spokesperson Marios Pelekanos expressed on Tuesday the hope that following a letter Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades sent to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, some pressure will be applied to the Turkish Cypriot side in order for a meeting between President Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar to take place.

Pelekanos was replying to a question by CNA on the next steps forward in view of a televised interview by Anastasiades on Monday evening, at Omega channel, in which he said that an effort by UN envoy Jane Holl Lute to arrange a meeting between himself and Tatar in New York was met with a refusal on the part of Turkish Cypriot negotiator Ergun Olgun to hold consultations with Greek Cypriot negotiator Andreas Mavroyiannis.

The Spokesperson noted that as President Anastasiades said in his interview, he “sent a letter to the Secretary General on August 30, in which he states his readiness for the meeting to take place.” He added that a reply is expected.

“What is a given, is the meeting the President will have with the SG in New York,” he noted, adding that even if there is no other development until then, it is a given that this meeting will take place.
 
“We have expressed our readiness and we are standing by,” Pelekanos said.

Invited to say whether efforts are ongoing behind the scenes to overcome this refusal, he said that “diplomatic efforts have and will always take place.”

He noted however that as President Anastasiades said during his interview, “when Lute received a negative reply by their negotiator to have a common meeting with our negotiator, it is even more unlikely to expect that Tatar will agree to have a meeting with the President.”

In any case, we have sent the letter to the Secretary General, the Government Spokesperson said, adding that “we hope that some pressure will be applied in order for this meeting to take place, but we will have to wait and see.”

Replying to a comment that in his letter to the UNSG President Anastasiades did not go into details about a recent proposal he made for a return to the Constitution of 1960, he explained that “I believe what the President said yesterday at Omega is quite clear: The President said that he will explain in detail the reasoning behind his proposal to the Secretary General.”

Referring to the letter, Pelekanos said that in it, President Anastasiades “conveys his readiness to take part in this meeting.”

“He also states that our side believes that such a meeting will help ongoing efforts for a resumption of the (negotiating) process,” he added. In this context he recalled that previous such meetings in 2017 and 2019 respectively had achieved an outcome.
 
Pelekanos also pointed out that in the letter “President Anastasiades reiterates our positive response as regards the appointment of a special representative,” something, he added, that “the Secretary General had proposed, we accepted but the other side didn’t.”
 
The Spokesperson said that in the letter the President also refers to the basis of an agreement – the framework of a solution, which is the outcome of the agreement between President Anastasiades and the Turkish Cypriot leader at the time Mustafa Akinci in November 2019, in Berlin, which determines the solution framework, that is to say that it results from the joint statement of February 11, 2014, convergences  which have been achieved and the Secretary General’s six points at Crans – Montana.
 
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Numerous UN-backed talks to reunite the island have failed to yield results.

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