Greece aims for next enlarged Cyprus meeting ‘to be a success’

Greece is aiming for the next enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem “to be a success”, the country’s President Constantine Tassoulas said, as he welcomed his Cypriot counterpart Nikos Christodoulides to Athens. “Greece, in full coordination with the Republic of Cyprus, is contributing constructively to the ongoing consultations, aiming for the next enlarged meeting to be a success … Attempts to create faits accomplis on the ground, as well as discussions about two-state solution scenarios, are not acceptable,” he said. The question of when such an enlarged meeting, which would involve the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the United Nations, remains open.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday ruled out the prospect of holding such a meeting on the sidelines of the UN’s “high-level week” in New York next week, saying that “there is still a lot of work to be done, but we are determined to move things ahead”. “We are determined to do everything possible for that to take place when conditions are met for the meeting to be successful. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past,” he said. He had said when he visited the island in July that an enlarged meeting would be convened “ after adequate progress ” is achieved on confidence-building measures, the meeting’s methodology and the substance of the talks. However, despite Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman having met on three separate occasions since then, no concrete progress has been achieved in the two months since Guterres’ visit, with the sides still in open disagreement over the meaning of political equality , crossing points , and the methodology of the talks. In addition, throughout the summer, initiatives had been taken by…