UN Special Advisor on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide, said Wednesday negotiators meeting for the second time this week are making good progress in their discussions.
In a post on his Twitter account, Eide said “Nicosia: 2nd #Cyprus Negotiators` meeting this week, good progress tackling outstanding issues”.
President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci decided last week to immediately re-engage in their negotiations and instructed their negotiators to continue meeting in order to achieve further progress on all outstanding issues interdependently, while they (Anastasiades and Akinci) will also meet as required.
Furthermore they decided that they will meet in Geneva on the 9th of January 2017, on the 11th of January they will present their respective maps and that from the 12th of January, a Conference on Cyprus will be convened with the added participation of the guarantor powers, while other relevant parties shall be invited as needed.
The two leaders held in November two rounds of talks in Mont-Pelerin, Switzerland, focusing on the territory aspect of the Cyprus problem. The UN announced after the end of their talks that despite their best efforts, they were not able to achieve the necessary further convergences on criteria for territorial adjustment that would have paved the way for the last phase of the talks.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Anastasiades and Akinci have been engaged in UN-led talks since May last year, with a view to reunite the island under a federal roof.