Guterres rules out meeting on Cyprus settlement on sidelines of UN General Assembly

There will be no expanded meeting on the Cyprus settlement in the 3+1 and 5+1 formats on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said. He made the statement at a traditional press conference ahead of the high-level week of the General Assembly.

Responding to a question from the Cyprus News Agency (CNA) about whether the conditions he had outlined in July had been met, Guterres said that the meeting “will not take place on the sidelines of the General Assembly” and stressed that much more work remained to be done.

At the same time, the UN chief said that the organisation was not giving up on its efforts. “We are determined to move the process forward and do everything possible to ensure that the meeting takes place when the conditions for its success are in place,” he said. Any future meeting, he added, must be prepared in a way that gives it a real chance of producing results: “we cannot repeat the mistakes of the past”.

Guterres announced preparations for a new expanded meeting at the end of July, following his visit to Cyprus from 27 to 29 July. The 5+1 format involves the leaders of the two communities, the guarantor countries — Greece, Türkiye and the United Kingdom — and the United Nations itself. At the time, the UN chief stipulated that it could only be convened after proper preparations on confidence-building measures, methodology and the substance of the issue, taking into account the progress already made in rapprochement.

In July, both leaders confirmed their readiness to continue working with the Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy Maria Angela Holguin and to expand confidence-building measures capable of changing the daily lives of Cypriots. The island has been divided since 1974, with a UN buffer zone running between the two sides.