Christodoulides and Erhürman to meet on 17 September ahead of UN General Assembly

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman will hold another round of talks on Thursday, 17 September. The meeting is scheduled for 11:00 at the UN compound in the area of Nicosia’s former airport and will be the last before the UN General Assembly, which opens in New York on 28 September.

The leaders of the two communities meet regularly to maintain a substantive negotiation process. The previous round took place on 9 September and focused on the methodology of the talks, substantive issues and confidence-building measures.

The current meeting was prepared by the negotiators: Menelaos Menelaou on the Greek Cypriot side and Mehmet Dana on the Turkish Cypriot side. They discussed the agenda at the beginning of the week.

The meeting comes a day after a statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who ruled out an expanded meeting on the Cyprus settlement on the sidelines of the General Assembly. He said that more work remained to be done and that any future meeting required preparation so that its outcome would be meaningful and would not repeat past mistakes.

At the same time, Guterres confirmed that the UN was not taking the issue off the agenda. “We are determined to move things forward and do everything possible to make this happen when the conditions for a successful meeting are in place,” he said.