Christodoulides to meet Erhurman next week

President Nikos Christodoulides will hold his next meeting with Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman next Friday, May 8, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said on Thursday.

He wrote in a post on social media that the meeting will take place at 4pm at United Nations special representative Khassim Diagne’s official residence in the buffer zone in Nicosia.

“President Christodoulides’ and Mr Erhurman’s regular meetings confirm our constant pursuit of maintaining open and honest channels of communication. Their aim is to contribute to the creation, step by step, of the conditions for the resumption of substantive negotiations,” he said.

He added that “for us, every contact must have an orientation” and “every discussion must have a purpose”, while “every confidence-building measure acquires real value when it serves the great pursuit – the return of substantive negotiations, with content, perspective and results.”

“The continuous undertaking of initiatives on President Christodoulides’ part is within this context. This effort is of particular importance at a time when the UN secretary-general [Antonio Guterres] has expressed his desire for developments on the Cyprus issue by the end of his term,” he said, with Guterres set to leave office at the end of this year.

He added that the Greek Cypriot side’s “position is clear”, and that “we are ready to respond immediately and substantially, provided that [Guterres] considers that his initiative is at a mature stage”.

“For [Christodoulides], the resolution of the Cyprus problem remains the highest national priority. Our goal remains the resumption of substantive negotiations, from that point at which they were interrupted, within the UN’s framework and on the basis of the relevant security council resolutions,” he said.

Erhurman and Christodoulides most recently met on April 6, with the United Nations having said that they had “exchanged views on substance and on the way forward”, while also having “welcomed [Guterres’] sustained commitment and engagement on the Cyprus issue”.

Christodoulides, meanwhile, had said that he and Erhurman had “exchanged some views on confidence-building measures, on all that has been heard from time to time”.

Erhurman made no statement about the meeting, having found himself at the centre of Turkish Cypriot domestic politics at the time, mediating between the ruling coalition and trade unions over the matter of payments of the cost-of-living allowance to public sector workers.