UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres would be very interested in hearing concrete ideas of how the parties in Cyprus could come together, his Special Representative on the island said in statements after being received on Friday by Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades.
Spehar said that he told Anastasiades “that the Secretary General is looking forward to meeting with the various parties involved in the Cyprus issue, including the guarantor powers – of course they will all be there at senior level – and he is looking foward to hearing the results of their reflection.”
“This is a meeting that we asked for basically to touch base and to help prepare New York prepare for the upcoming meetings that will be happening in the coming days,” she said, noting that she would also meet later on with Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci in order to also talk with him about the upcoming meetings in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
“Mr. Anastasiades will be meeting the SG at the margins of the General Assembly, as he usually does, to talk about the Cyprus issue and of course as President of the Republic of Cyprus he will also be addressing other issues,” Spehar said, adding that “Mr. Akinci, as he customarily does, will also be at the margins of the GA and he will be also having a meeting with the Secretary General.”
Spehar recalled that after the Crans-Montana Cyprus talks the Secretary General suggested to the parties and to the leaders in particular that it would be good to reflect on the outcome of Crans – Montana and on the way forward.
“And now it seems to be a good time to hear from all of them and to hear their ideas on precisely what their plans are for moving forward. The SG would be very interested in particular to hear concrete ideas of how the parties could come together,” she noted.
Asked if the SG will only hear from the parties, from the leaders or he will make any suggestions for the next step, the Canadian diplomat said that the Cyprus talks “are leader-led, they are Cypriot led and Cypriot -owned. So in that spirit the SG really wants to hear from the parties first of all.”
Asked if the Guterres framework put forward in Crans-Montana is the way forward and everybody should respect it, Spehar said that the Secretary General would like to hear from the parties about that and stressed that “the framework remains available and the SG`s good offices remain available.”
Invited to say if the pre-election campaign in Cyprus, where presidential elections will take place in early 2018, could hinder this effort, Spehar replied: “No, not necessarily. The process has gone forward at many different moments throughout the years within electoral Cyprus and outside of electoral cycles. There are always different factors that could affect the outcome of a process but I dont` think one needs to say necessarily that that would be a negative factor or a hindering factor.”
Asked about the UNSG`s report, she noted that “this is a Secretary General`s report on his good offices” and recalled that the Secretary General himself referred to the report in an answer to a question by a journalist a couple of days ago in New York.
“And so I can only repeat what he said which is that the report should be coming out either the end of this month or the beginning of next and so we should be seeing it coming out quite shortly,” she concluded.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkey invaded and occupied its northern third. The latest round of UN-peace talks commenced at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana on June 28, but in the early hours of July 7, it was announced that the Conference on Cyprus ended without an agreement. Talks held under the auspices of the UN aim at reunifying Cyprus under a federal roof.