Christodoulides to meet UN envoy Hahn on Thursday

President Nikos Christodoulides will meet the European Union’s envoy for the Cyprus problem Johannes Hahn on Thursday, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis announced on Wednesday.

He said Christodoulides and Hahn will meet at 8.15am, before stressing that “the involvement of the European Union in the efforts to resume negotiations was a goal that President Christodoulides himself had personally set from the very beginning”.

The arrival of an envoy from the EU, he said, alongside “his mission and terms of reference” on the island, “create additional diplomatic capacity, which did not exist until now”.

Christodoulides’ meeting with Hahn will come ahead of a joint visit with Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman to the offices of the Committee on Missing Persons at 3.15pm on the same day, before the pair meet United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin later that afternoon.

Letymbiotis said that the tripartite meeting “takes on profound significance, if we consider that for years, a joint meeting has been due in our country”.

He added that Christodoulides “comes to this joint meeting with one and only goal, that this meeting should constitute a decisive step towards the resumption of negotiations from the point at which they were interrupted” in the Swiss ski resort in 2017.

Hahn will meet Holguin on Thursday, and the Cyprus Mail contacted Erhurman’s office over whether Erhurman will also meet Hahn but received no response.

Since his appointment was announced in May, Hahn has made one official visit to the island thus far holding meetings with both Christodoulides and Erhurman in Nicosia in June.

Christodoulides said at the time that Cyprus is counting on the EU’s support to bring about a return to negotiations on the Cyprus problem.

“We count on your support and the support of the European Union in order to resume negotiations that will lead us to the solution of the Cyprus problem,” he said, before stressing that “the role of the European Union is to support the United Nations’ effort, not to replace the UN effort”.

Erhurman met Hahn after Ersin Tatar, the Turkish Cypriot leader of the day, refused to do so, and wrote in a post on social media after the meeting that he had discussed a range of issues with him, including the framework for a Cyprus problem solution, electricity interconnection, and the property issue.

“Once again, we have the opportunity to explain things comprehensively. Dialogue and diplomacy are always good. We will keep talking to everyone, without getting tired or bored of explaining,” he said.