Tripartite talks end without agreement, no enlarged meeting planned

The tripartite meeting on the Cyprus problem involving United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin, President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman ended without any agreements being reached, with Holguin confirming afterwards that no enlarged meeting would be arranged as a result.

“For the time being, there will be no new enlarged meeting,” she told journalists after the meeting’s conclusion, saying that for such a meeting to be arranged, “we need results on the confidence-building measures”.

She added that “I am waiting for something more”, before responding to a question over whether Christodoulides and Erhurman had responded to the demand for more progress she had made on Tuesday by saying “I think they might. Not yet”.

Despite this, she insisted that she is “not disappointed” in the lack of results from her latest visit to the island.

“All processes are dynamic. This one is a little slower, but we are continuing,” she said.

Christodoulides, too, denied being disappointed upon his return to the presidential palace, before outlining the five-point package of proposals he had submitted to Holguin and Erhurman at the meeting.

The first proposal, he said, was that “the basis for a solution to the Cyprus problem” be “reaffirmed”, while the second was that the UN should prepare a list of convergences found between the two sides up to the point at which negotiations collapsed in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana in 2017.

He said that list should be shared with the participants at the next enlarged meeting – the island’s two sides, the UN and its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

The third proposal was that a new enlarged meeting be convened, while the fourth was that at that meeting, the resumption of talks based on the list of convergences found be announced.

His fifth and final proposal was that four crossing points, in the uninhabited Turkish Cypriot enclave of Kokkina, in the village of Louroujina, between Nicosia and Larnaca, in the eastern Nicosia suburb of Mia Milia, and a through road between the town of Athienou and the southeastern Nicosia suburb of Aglandjia, be opened after the next enlarged meeting.

Additionally, he said, he had “expressed readiness” to announce “additional unilateral measures for the Turkish Cypriots” and also suggested that Greek Cypriot chief negotiator Menelaos Menelaou and Erhurman’s undersecretary Mehmet Dana meet within the next two weeks.

That meeting, he said, should take place with “one goal, and only one: the resumption [of negotiations]”.

Asked about Erhurman’s response to his list of suggestions, he said he did not wish to speak on his interlocutor’s behalf.

He was then asked whether Erhurman’s own four points for negotiations to resume in earnest were discussed, and answered in the negative.

“No. I answered this when I went there, about those four specific points. I repeated what I told you and mentioned publicly. I repeated the same things during the discussion on this specific issue,” he said.

He went on to say that “the discussion will continue”, and that Erhurman had “expressed his readiness to meet without Holguin being present if she is not in Cyprus”.

“We will not wait for her to return,” he said.

Asked again about the matter of crossing points, he insisted that the Greek Cypriot side is “ready [to open] the Mia Milia crossing point even today”, and that regarding planned crossing points in Athienou and Aglandjia, he was “ready to accept” a compromise offered by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in July last year.

While he did not disclose what was offered in July last year, Erhurman’s predecessor Ersin Tatar had said at the time that he had objected to the proposal put forward by Christodoulides at that month’s enlarged meeting as the vast majority of the road between Athienou and Aglandjia routed through the buffer zone, rather than through the north.

Christodoulides was also asked on Wednesday about the possibility of a new pedestrian crossing point in Nicosia’s old town and said that like in the case of Mia Milia, “I expressed the position that I was ready for a relevant announcement to be made today”.

He was also asked about the matter of political equality between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities – a key stipulation of UN resolutions regarding the Cyprus problem and an early demand made by Erhurman after his election last year.

“The issue of political equality has stopped being an issue since the joint statement of December 11. Political equality, as described in the resolutions,” he said, in reference to the joint statement made after last month’s tripartite meeting.

He added that political equality “has never been questioned by our side” and that “the problem which existed with the previous Turkish Cypriot leader was because he presented political equality as sovereign equality, which does not exist anywhere”.

Earlier, the UN had released a statement announcing the conclusion of the meeting, saying that Holguin had “noted that such direct dialogue is essential in order to express views, concerns, and hopes”.

“This is particularly important as we are currently in a pre-negotiation phase. Constant and direct dialogue is essential,” it said, before adding that Christodoulides and Erhurman had “shared their proposals to chart a way forward to start substantive negotiations”.

It went on to say that the pair “reviewed the work on the list of the trust-building initiatives previously put on the table and noted some of the advances achieved between both sides”.

“They will now continue efforts to reach agreements on the various trust-building initiatives that are on the table as well as towards the start of substantive negotiations,” it said.