British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab will pay a short visit to Cyprus to hold consecutive meetings on February 4 with the President of the Republic, Nicos Anastasiades, the UNSG`s Special Representative on the island, Elizabeth Spehar, Foreign Minister, Nikos Christodoulides and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Ersin Tatar, CNA has learned.
Raab`s discussions are expected to focus on the informal 5+1 meeting on the Cyprus problem which the UN Secretary – General, Antonio Guterres, is expected to convene and which is likely to take place at the beginning of March. Raab will most likely represent his country at the meeting, since it is expected that the three guarantor powers, namely Greece, Turkey and the UK, will participate in the informal meeting by their Foreign Ministers.
CNA has learned that Raab will have a private meeting with his Cypriot counterpart to be followed by expanded talks of delegations of the two countries. Apart from the Cyprus problem and the forthcoming informal meeting, Christodoulides and Raab are expected to discuss about the bilateral relations of Cyprus and the UK, after Brexit, the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and regional issues. The two Ministers will make statements to the media after their talks.
The British Foreign Secretary will meet with President Anastasides early in the morning and afterwards with Spehar, with whom he will discuss, in view of the approval by the UN Security Council of the resolution for the renewal of the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) mandate, about the task and the role of the force to which Britain has a numerous contingent.
Raab who will arrive to Cyprus on the evening of February 3, will meet with Tatar in the occupied areas of the Republic, early in the afternoon on February 4, before leaving the island.
This is the first visit of a British Foreign Secretary to Cyprus after a visit which Boris Johnson paid in 2016.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. The latest UN backed round of talks took place in 2017, in the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana, but failed to yield any results.