UN Secretary General`s Special Representative in Cyprus Elizabeth Spehar is expected this week at the UN Headquarters in New York to brief Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the latest developments on the Cyprus problem, following her recent meetings with Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci. She is also expected to hold consultations with other senior officials at the UN Secretariat.
Guterres’ original plan was to send the former Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Marie Guehenno to Cyprus for contacts with the two leaders. While the Cypriot government gave its consent for this, the Turkish Cypriot side and Turkey rejected it, noting that they cannot accept EU citizens as representatives of the UN. Guehenno is French.
However, last November, Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot side did not raise any objections, when Wolfgang Weisbrod-Weber, a German former diplomat, led the strategic review of UNFICYP.
Meanwhile, in evaluating the situation of the Cyprus peace negotiations Antonio Guterres will also have before him a report by Priscilla Hayner, an American specialist and member of the UN Standby Team of Senior Mediation Advisers, a group of full-time mediation experts who can be rapidly deployed to provide technical advice to UN officials and others leading mediation and conflict prevention efforts.
Hayner was in Cyprus in November and December and met with people from both sides. According her biography at the UN website, “she undertook an in-depth lessons-learned assessment of the peace talks in Cyprus.”
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. 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.