With UN Assistant Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo due to visit Cyprus within a week, it is not clear yet whether the two Cypriot leaders will have a second meeting beforehand on the issue of crossing points that has become unnecessarily contentious.

It has been reported but not confirmed that they could meet this coming Friday.

When UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar informally in New York last October he gave them one job before calling a five-party conference – try to agree on the opening of new crossings.

Progress on this so far has in the very least been disappointing. The leaders have only managed one meeting and another couple between their respective negotiators.

Each side has been focusing on which crossings would suit them the most, which is logical but at the same time seem to be dismissing the needs of the other side altogether.

This is more of a tendency on the Turkish Cypriot side.

Christodoulides, even though he hasn’t dismissed certain crossings outright as Tatar has done, muddied the waters with an eight-point list of suggestions for “reciprocity”, four of which were not directly linked to new openings.

All this has done is given Tatar more ammunition to question his motives.

Amid all the hullabaloo, comments by Turkish Cypriot ‘foreign minister’ Tahsin Ertugruolglu at the weekend either show that he’s personally out of touch with Turkish Cypriots or does not care.

Ertugruolglu said some crossings should be closed describing them as “useless and costly”, only being used by Greek Cypriots. Each of the nine crossings was an expense while only Greek Cypriots benefitted, he went on.

He also rejected accusations that he was the sticking point in negotiations but admitted if agreement was reached, he would get a proxy to sign for him – all very conciliatory.

According to the Turkish Cypriots’ own statistics, Ertugruolglu was factually incorrect.

Only two months ago they published figures showing that 2,198,533 crossings were made by Greek Cypriots in the first nine of months of 2024, down from 2,302,065 over the same period in 2023.

At the same time, 2,158,150 crossings were made by Turkish Cypriots during the nine months, up from 1,840,404 in 2023.

It is also clear that Ertugruolglu’s view is not widely shared by Turkish Cypriot community leaders, especially those who believe their villages will benefit from more crossings.

Louroujina’s Ali Karavezirler said on Monday, they could be ready to link with Lymbia in ten days saying: “Let the crossing points open everywhere”.

His view has been shared recently by the Turkish Cypriot mayor of the north of Nicosia, Mehmet Harmanci, who said his “ideal” was for Nicosia to be brought “to a point where it can be opened to unlimited and mutual crossings”.

Perhaps the leaders can bear in mind – if they do meet – that the whole point of the crossings is to make life easier for Cypriots on both sides, not for scoring political points. Probably not though.