President Nikos Christodoulides on Wednesday said that his meeting with United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin next week will not be the first to have taken place since UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres undertook a “new initiative” with the aim of bringing about a resumption of formal negotiations on the Cyprus problem.

“It is not the first meeting which we will have within the framework of the new initiative … as I mentioned publicly after the meeting we had [with Guterres] in Brussels. The meeting … will be the continuation of meetings which have taken place, are taking place, and will continue to take place until Holguin arrives,” he told reporters.

Holguin will hold separate meetings with Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on June 8, before travelling to both Turkey and Greece thereafter.

The question of when a “new initiative” on the Cyprus problem may be undertaken has been ongoing for weeks, with Erhurman having said a month ago that such an initiative will begin in July, following the conclusion of Cyprus’ six-month term as the holder of the Council of the European Union’s rotating presidency.

However, the Greek Cypriot side has insisted that such an initiative is “already underway”, with government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis having said that Christodoulides had “made public this initiative” after he met Guterres in Brussels in March.

“Our side is ready, even tomorrow if it is necessary, to participate in an enlarged meeting, to resume negotiations from the point at which they were interrupted, in accordance with the resolutions of the [UN] security council,” he said at the time.

Holguin most recently visited Cyprus in January, holding a tripartite meeting with both leaders, and saying thereafter that no enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem could be held until more before “results on the confidence-building measures” between the island’s two sides are achieved.

An enlarged meeting, which would involve the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN, remains Christodoulides’ main aim, and he said earlier this month that he expects for the date of such a meeting to be announced “soon”.

He said at the time that Guterres’ “effort is being strengthened even more”, and that as such “we expect soon to have a positive outcome, which, for us, can be nothing other than the convening of an enlarged meeting at which the resumption of talks will be announced”.

The convening of an enlarged meeting will require the consent of the Turkish Cypriot side, with Erhurman previously having expressed reservations regarding the prospect of such a meeting being held before substantial progress is achieved in devising and executing confidence-building measures between the two sides in Cyprus.

He has said before that Christodoulides’ insistence on the matter constitutes an effort to circumvent the Turkish Cypriots.

“I want to emphasise this. What they actually understand by an enlarged meeting is this, I am sorry, but the Greek Cypriot leadership has always tried to address the Republic of Turkey, not the Turkish Cypriot side. This is being repeated,” he said at last month’s Antalya diplomacy forum.

Instead, he said, he would rather discuss matters directly with the Greek Cypriot side.

“What I said was, ‘let us meet face-to-face in Nicosia, and let us both make decisions on confidence-building measures which will make life easier for both the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot people,” he said.

The most recent enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem took place in July last year, before Erhurman’s election.

Since Holguin’s most recent visit, Erhurman and Christodoulides have met multiple times, most recently convening this month.