Christodoulides To Bring UN Talks Agenda To Monday Meeting With Erhürman

Christodoulides said he had requested the meeting himself and that its primary purpose was to exchange views on what he discussed with the UN Secretary-General in Brussels two weeks ago. “The basic goal for which I requested this meeting is to have an exchange of views on what I discussed with the UN Secretary-General — on how there can be substantive progress towards resuming talks and resolving the Cyprus problem,” he said, adding that he would not exclude other topics should Erhürman wish to raise them.

Government Spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis said the UN Secretary-General’s commitment, as expressed in his recent meeting with the President, was encouraging. “Our will for substantive negotiations remains unwavering,” he said. Letymbiotis was speaking at a Te Deum address at the Cathedral of Saint Theodore in Paphos, where he warned that the current era was a critical one for international law.

UN Security Council resolutions, he said, could not be overlooked or disregarded — otherwise “what collapses is not only our own vindication. It is the credibility of the entire international system.”

He said Cyprus was making use of its EU membership, its diplomatic relations with neighbouring states, and the synergies it had developed with European and third countries, always seeking to be “part of the solution and never part of the problem.”

This capacity, he added, was “the result of a strategic strengthening of all factors of our country’s power, internal and external,” in service of “one and only supreme priority: the liberation of our homeland, within the agreed framework, with respect for the negotiating acquis and on the basis of the principles, values and law of the European Union.”

Asked separately about complaints from Turkish Cypriots who said they were prevented from making a pilgrimage to the Hala Sultan mosque in Larnaca, Christodoulides said a specific procedure had been communicated through the United Nations well in advance.

“Obviously certain people in the Turkish Cypriot community — and I want to be fair, I am not referring to the Turkish Cypriot leader, I am referring to certain others — did not want this pilgrimage to take place and tried through irregular means to achieve what did not happen,” he said. He added that the relevant procedure had been conveyed early enough to ensure the pilgrimage could go ahead.