President Nikos Christodoulides said on Sunday that he is fully prepared to attend a multilateral meeting on the Cyprus issue under UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, presenting concrete ideas and proposals aimed at restarting negotiations.

Speaking on the sidelines of the presentation of the priorities of Cyprus’ EU Council presidency in Lefkara, and asked to comment on recent statements by Turkey’s defence minister, Christodoulides said a new effort has begun following the election of Tufan Erhurman as leader of the Turkish Cypriot community.

“We genuinely hope that this new effort will lead to specific positive results, which are nothing other than the resumption of talks from where they left off in 2017,” the president said.

He stressed that the Greek Cypriot side has a clear objective. “We know where we want to go. Our goal is one: the liberation and reunification of our country, and towards that direction we are doing everything possible,” he added.

Christodoulides expressed hope that conditions would soon be created on the Turkish side to allow a multilateral meeting to take place and to pave the way for the resumption of negotiations.

“I want to state publicly, as I also did during our recent joint meeting in Nicosia, that I am fully ready, whenever the Secretary-General invites us, to attend with specific ideas and proposals on how to achieve the main objective – and that main objective is the resumption of talks,” he said.