United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin is to return to Cyprus next month, President Nikos Christodoulides said on Wednesday, as he departed from the presidential palace for his meeting with Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman.

“In early September, we expect Holguin in Cyprus. The UN’s preparation is at a very advanced stage in relation to the convergences. It is something I will raise today, we will discuss today, so that the conditions are created to achieve what the UN secretary-general requested,” he said.

He added that what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had “requested” during his visit to the island last month was “the resumption of talks from where they were interrupted in the summer of 2017” in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.

Holguin had most recently travelled to Cyprus alongside Guterres last month, with Guterres saying at the end of that meeting that a new enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem will be convened “after adequate progress” is achieved on the matters of confidence-building measures, the meeting’s methodology and the substance of the talks.

More recently, she had stressed that the implementation of confidence-building measures is an “indispensable condition” to be fulfilled ahead of an enlarged meeting, which will involve the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and the UN itself. 

“Confidence-building measures should not be seen merely as symbolic steps which improve the atmosphere between the two communities, but rather as practical tools which test the viability of a future political order,” she told Turkey’s Anka news agency.  

She added that confidence-building measures are “important in demonstrating whether cooperation works in practice” and said that “such initiatives help create the collaborative habits which a future solution will need”.

“People’s fear of a solution or change can only be overcome through concrete implementations in the field. Societies’ anxieties about a solution can be reduced to the extent that these measures do not impact daily life,” she said.

Chief among those possible confidence-building measures is the possible opening of crossing points between the island’s two sides, on which talks remained deadlocked over the question of whether to break up the package of four locations upon which the sides had agreed last year.  

On this matter, the Greek Cypriot side proposed removing Louroujina, northwest of Larnaca, from the package of four, instead opening crossing points near Athienou, and in the eastern Nicosia suburbs of Mia Milia and Aglandjia, and the Turkish Cypriot side flatly refused to entertain any discussions which did not include all four agreed upon locations.