UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has received the report by his personal envoy to Cyprus and is studying it, a spokesperson for the UN chief confirmed late on Thursday.

“The secretary-general received yesterday, Wednesday, the report by Ms [Maria Angela] Holguin regarding her efforts to find common ground for a way forward on the Cyprus issue,” said Stephane Dujarric, chief spokesman for Guterres.

The UN boss, added Dujarric, would now review Holguin’s recommendations so as to later propose “the next steps” to the leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities.

Earlier, Nicosia had said it was waiting for a statement from the office of the United Nations secretary-general on the state of play of the Cyprus issue, following the writing of the annual reports on the state of Unficyp and the UN’s Good Offices on the island.

Speaking to journalists, President Nikos Christodoulides said he had a telephone conversation with Holguin, currently in New York to present the findings of her six-month tour of duty in Cyprus as the UN chief’s personal envoy.

Christodoulides also spoke on the phone with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, where the latter briefed him on the conversation he had with the Turkish leader.

In addition, Foreign Minister Konstantinos Kombos was briefed by his Greek counterpart regarding the latter’s meeting with Turkey’s top diplomat.

Other than delivering her report to the UN chief, Holguin was also meeting with Greece’s Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, both in the United States to attend the Nato summit which is taking place in the country’s capital Washington DC.

Greek leader Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit on Wednesday night, with the former making a brief reference to Cyprus in his statements thereafter.

He is quoted by Greek newspaper Kathimerini as having said Cyprus “cannot remain divided much longer” and that talks aimed at reunifying the island “should resume”.

Cyprus aside, the meeting focused on bilateral relations between Greece and Turkey, as well as other regional and global matters.

Erdogan told Mitsotakis Turkey is “maintaining its efforts to promote the spirit of solidarity with Greece based on good neighbourly relations” and called for a “necessary intensifying” of “positive actions” to put an end to conflicts in Ukraine and Israel-Palestine.

The pair will next meet in September in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Meanwhile, Mitsotakis is set to meet Guterres in New York on Friday to discuss Greece’s accession to the UN Security Council as a non-permanent member next year, as well as the Cyprus problem.

Erdogan is not scheduled to meet Guterres while in the US but did meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

He was also close to front and centre in the “family photo” of all the Nato leaders taken on Wednesday, standing between British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.

Mitsotakis stood in the second row directly behind Erdogan, flanked by Olaf Scholz and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

At the same time, United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (Unficyp) chief Colin Stewart on Thursday briefed the UN Security Council on the latest state of the Cyprus problem.

Stewart addressed a closed Security Council session in New York, with his speech coinciding with the writing of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ latest annual reports on the state of Unficyp and the UN’s Good Offices on the island.