Next month’s enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem, which is set to take place in New York, is to go ahead “despite the negative stance of the Turkish side”, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Saturday.

Addressing Dipa’s party conference, he described the forthcoming conference as “an initiative which was created and developed thanks to our own clear political will, our own persistent efforts which led to the end of the seven-year stalemate on the Cyprus issue”.

He also said that it was “our own efforts” which secured the appointment of Johannes Hahn as the European Union’s envoy for the Cyprus problem, “to remind some who mocked us when we set this goal when we took over the governance of this place”.

Hahn’s appointment, he added, came about after a “substantial intervention of the European Union’s institutions”, in the shape of the joint letter sent to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Antonio Costa on the matter of Cyprus in March.

Christodoulides’ comments come after UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin had earlier told Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis of a “failure to achieve the expected progress” on some issues related to the Cyprus problem.

She is expected to return to Cyprus after travelling to Brussels in early July, and then London.

Upon her departure from Cyprus last month, she had said that both Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar and President Nikos Christodoulides “expressed willingness to make progress” towards achieving and implementing the confidence-building measures agreed upon at March’s enlarged meeting.

She met both Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar twice during her last visit to the island, with government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis saying that a tripartite meeting with Holguin and Tatar “would be beneficial and very useful”.

However, Tatar twice ruled out meeting Christodoulides in light of the arrests made by the Republic of Cyprus of people accused of selling Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north, saying that it is “not possible to talk about a healthy dialogue” between Cyprus’ two sides given the context.