United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is continuing to work with the goal of having negotiations in earnest to solve the Cyprus problem resume before the end of his ten-year term in office, which expires at the end of next month, the Cyprus Mail understands.

Sources close to the matter have informed the newspaper that a planned tripartite meeting involving Guterres, President Nikos Christodoulides, and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman may well take place before the end of the month, with it possible that that meeting will then pave the way for an enlarged meeting to be held.

At present, it is understood that the tripartite meeting 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.

The tripartite meeting will then most likely take place in Europe.

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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.

Enlarged meeting could be held in first half of December

Sources told the Cyprus Mail that should it be deemed that “adequate” progress has been achieved at the end of the tripartite meeting, it remains possible that an enlarged meeting could be held during the first half of December.

The Greek Cypriot side has long maintained that the next enlarged meeting should bring about the resumption of negotiations, with Christodoulides having said in July that his aim at the next enlarged meeting is for “a positive announcement for the resumption of talks from where they were interrupted at Crans-Montana”, the Swiss ski resort where talks most recently collapsed in 2017.

Likewise, the Turkish Cypriot side has said that it seeks an enlarged meeting which will bring about tangible results, with Erhurman having said in September that his hope is for the next enlarged meeting to be one where “success is guaranteed”.

He said that his stance on the prospect of holding such a meeting “echoes the secretary-general’s statements, expressed both after Crans-Montana – that ‘this time must be different’ – and at [a] press conference – that ‘the mistakes of the past must not be repeated’”.

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.