The President of the Republic, Nikos Christodoulidis, is meeting today in New York with the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.
This is the first official meeting of Nikos Christodoulidis with Mr. Guterres, at the headquarters of the international organization, after his election to the Presidency of the Republic, which is taking place at a critical period for the Cyprus issue in which Nicosia seeks to reactivate of a process through the appointment of an envoy of the Secretary-General, who will explore the prospects for resuming the dialogue.
Therefore, the President of the Republic will repeat, during the meeting, to the Secretary-General the request for the appointment of this envoy, in the context of efforts to restart the negotiations from where they left off, recalling at the same time his proposal for more active involvement of the EU in Cyprus, in light of the course of Euro-Turkish relations and always under the auspices of the UN.
The meeting between Christodoulidis and Guterres is scheduled for 1210 local time (1910 Cyprus time) and is expected to last around 15 minutes. Almost an hour later, at 1305 (2005 Cyprus time), Mr. Guterres will meet with the Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
The attempt to restart the process for the Cyprus issue and the need to appoint an envoy of the Secretary General will be at the center of a working lunch that President Christodoulidis will give today Friday to the Permanent Representatives of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council. Yesterday Thursday, President Christodoulidis had meetings in New York with officials of two countries that are Permanent Members of the Security Council, with the US Deputy Secretary of State, Victoria Newland, and the Vice President of China, Han Zheng, who expressed their support for the appointment of an envoy of the Secretary-General of the UN on the Cyprus issue.
The possibility of a tripartite meeting between Mr. Guterres and President Christodoulidis and Turkish leader Ersin Tatar remains open, even before Saturday night, when President Christodoulidis is scheduled to depart from New York. It is noted that the UN Secretary General will meet with the Turkish leader on Saturday morning. It is still possible that a tripartite meeting will not take place now and that the Secretary-General will invite the two leaders for a joint meeting in the near future, according to diplomatic sources.
However, an important role in the developments will be played by the expected meeting of the UN Secretary General with the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, whom Mr. Guterres will meet after the cancellation of the meeting that was to be held with him on Tuesday by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Mr Fidan met on Thursday in New York with EU High Representative Josep Borrell. As Mr. Borel said in his post on social media, they talked about the next steps in EU-Turkey relations, in view of the report he will present with the European Commission to the European Council, as well as the extremely worrying situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In the meantime, in addition to the meetings with the UN Secretary General, contacts are made by the interested parties in the Cyprus conflict and with other officials of the United Nations Secretariat. The negotiator of the I/O side Menelaus Menelaus had meetings in New York on Wednesday and Thursday with the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peace Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, and with the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix.
In the meantime this evening, the President of the Republic, his wife Philippa Karseras Christodoulidis and the members of the Cypriot delegation will go to the Queens area, where they will sit at a dinner hosted by the expatriate organizations in honor of the President of the Republic.
During the dinner, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be honored by expatriate organizations with the Freedom Award.