UN Special Adviser on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide, is set to visit Ankara and hold meetings with Turkish officials on Tuesday and Wednesday, UN Cyprus Spokesperson Aleem Siddique told CAN English today.
Siddique noted that Eide will travel to Turkey on Monday evening and will hold his meetings at the Turkish Foreign Ministry. Siddique also said that Eide may meet with other relevant officials, adding that his meetings “have not yet been confirmed.”
GREECE VISIT
Eide visited Athens, Greece on Friday and met with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias.
Eide said after that meeting he had the “opportunity to go through in detail some of the ideas we are developing on how to think about a new security framework for Cyprus.”
The UN Special Advisor added that the framework must be one “which can be accepted and supported both by the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities, but also by the guarantor powers, so that they can be part of the necessary change from what we have today to what we will have tomorrow.”
MONT PELERIN TALKS
Eide added that he was “particularly encouraged” by the second Conference on Cyprus session, which took place at a technocratic level, which showed that “there was a certain space for further discussions which we are elaborating on with this particular visit.”
TURKEY-GREECE TENSIONS
Eide also commented on “some [recent] complicated tensions between Turkey and Greece”, noting that this was a background setting that “I would rather be without” but which should not be allowed to negatively affect the Cyprus talks.
Tensions over disputed Greek islets in the Aegean Sea, airspace violations and discord on how to handle Byzantine heritage inside Turkey have cracked open an old schism between the two NATO allies.
The refusal in January of a Greek court to extradite eight former Turkish army officers over the failed July 15 coup widened that chasm.
NEGOTIATORS’ MEETING
The Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot chief negotiators are set to meet on Tuesday prior to Thursday’s meeting between Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot chief Mustafa Akinci.
Tuesday’s meeting is taking place following a decision by Anastasiades and Akinci to ask the UN to prepare, along with consulting the guarantor powers, for Conference on Cyprus to continue at political level next month.
According to CNA English, the Conference is not scheduled to take place before March 6.
BACKGROUND
January 11 saw the historic exchange of territorial adjustment maps. A day later, the Geneva-based Conference on Cyprus was convened with the island’s three guarantor powers (Greece, the UK, Turkey), the EU and UN.
Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot chief Mustafa Akinci have been engaged in UN-led talks since May 2015 aiming to reunify the island under a federal roof, following Turkey’s 1974 invasion and illegal occupation on the island.
Source: CNA English
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