United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres believes the results of Monday’s tripartite meeting of President Nikos Christodoulides, Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman, and UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin to be “substantial”, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said on Tuesday evening.

He spoke after Guterres held a telephone call with Christodoulides, and said that the pair had discussed Monday’s meeting as well as Guterres’ earlier meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of the UN’s Cop31 climate summit in Antalya.

On this front, he said that Guterres had told Christodoulides that he and Erdogan had discussed the results of Monday’s meeting.

Looking ahead, he said that Guterres and Christodoulides had also discussed “the next steps” for the Cyprus problem, with it expected that Guterres, Christodoulides, and Erhurman will hold a tripartite meeting in the coming weeks.

Related Articles

It is understood that that summit will take place at some point after Guterres returns from the Philippines, where he is due to attend the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)’s leaders’ summit, which will take place between November 16 and November 18.

Turkey’s presidential communications directorate confirmed that Erdogan and Guterres had discussed the Cyprus problem, as well as recent developments in Libya and Gaza, and that Erdogan had told Guterres that “Turkey is pleased to assume the Cop31 presidency”.

“The necessary preparations for a successful conference have been completed,” it added, while also saying that Erdogan “hopes that the summit in Turkey will serve as a new starting point for addressing climate-related challenges”.

Two new crossing points to open after leaders’ meeting

Christodoulides and Erhurman had agreed on Monday for the simultaneous opening of two new crossing points, south of the village of Louroujina, near Larnaca, and south of the village of Karavostasi, west of Lefka, and for the sharing of “archival material” through the technical committee on cultural heritage.

Additionally, the leaders agreed that the Imagine programme, the bicommunal education project which had been frozen since the Turkish Cypriot side withdrew from it in 2022, will relaunch under the supervision of the technical committee on education, and that a number of Maronite churches and an Armenian monastery will be restored.

Guterres had said during his visit to the island in July that an enlarged meeting, involving the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN, will be convened “after adequate progress” is achieved on confidence-building measures, the meeting’s methodology and the substance of the talks.

It is now hoped that his acquiescence to a tripartite meeting with the two leaders may open the way for “adequate” progress to be made for an enlarged meeting to be called in due course.