Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have agreed to stay in continuous contact in view of the Conference on Cyprus that will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday.
The two leaders had a telephone conversation earlier today, the Greek Prime Minister’s office said in a statement.
|According to sources close to Tsipras, the Greek Premier reiterated Athens’ position that the aim is to find a just and viable solution on the basis of UN resolutions and that the obsolete system of guarantees has to be abolished and the occupation troops must withdraw.
Following two rounds of talks they had in November 2016 in Mont-Pelerin Switzerland, during which they were not able to achieve the necessary further convergences on criteria for territorial adjustments that would have paved the way for the last phase of the talks, Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci decided on December 1st 2016 to immediately re-engage in their negotiations, instructing at the same time their negotiators to continue meeting in order to achieve further progress on all outstanding issues interdependently.
Furthermore, they decided to meet in Geneva on January 9-11 and on the 11th of January to present their respective maps. According to their decision a Conference on Cyprus will be convened from the 12th of January. The guarantor powers -UK, Greece and Turkey- will also participate at the Conference.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. Anastasaides and Akinci have been engaged in UN-backed talks since May 2015, with a view to reunite the island under a federal roof.