President Nikos Christodoulides will have a one-on-one meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday.

Their meeting will take place on the sidelines of the ongoing UN general assembly in New York and will come ahead of a planned tripartite meeting involving Christodoulides, Guterres and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar which is set to take place on Saturday.

Tatar will also hold a one-on-one meeting with Guterres after he arrives in New York on Friday.

Saturday’s meeting will be held with a view to arrange a third enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem this year, involving Cyprus’ two sides, the UN and the island’s three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, likely taking place in late November.

That enlarged meeting will take place after the Turkish Cypriot leadership election on October 19.

That election will see Tatar be challenged by former Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Tufan Erhurman, who advocates for a return to negotiations based on a federal solution.

However, to do so, he will likely have to convince Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said in his speech to the UN general assembly on Tuesday night that a solution to the Cyprus problem “cannot be built on the federal model” – the model preferred by Christodoulides and set out in UN resolutions.

This, Erdogan said, is because attempts to find a federal solution to the Cyprus problem have “failed due to the intransigent stance of the Greek Cypriot side”.

“I invite the international community to recognise the Turkish republic of northern Cyprus and to establish diplomatic, political and economic relations,” he said.

Christodoulides hit back at Erdogan during his address to the general assembly on Wednesday, saying that Erdogan had pointed the finger to others, for crimes Turkey itself commits every single day.

“From this very podium … Erdogan preached the world on peace and accountability. He pointed the finger to others, for crimes Turkey itself commits every single day. That is selective sensitivity and hypocrisy of the highest form,” Christodoulides said.

He added that “illegality stemming from use of force cannot be recognised”.

The heads of government of Cyprus’ remaining two guarantor powers, Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the UK’s Sir Keir Starmer, will both make their speeches to the general assembly on Friday.

Last year, Mitsotakis had said a two-state solution to the Cyprus problem “cannot happen and cannot be accepted”, and reaffirmed his country’s support for a bizonal, bicommunal federal solution.

Such a solution, he said, must entail “one sovereignty, one citizenship and one international personality, in accordance with the UN security council’s resolutions.”