Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman met for approximately an hour and a half on Tuesday before departing separately, with Christodoulides describing the exchange as open and honest and confirming the two leaders would meet again very soon.
Speaking from the Presidential Palace after the meeting, which was held at the Nicosia residence of UNFICYP head Khassim Diagne, Christodoulides said the two sides had covered both confidence-building measures and matters of substance.
“We had an open and honest discussion,” he said. “We discussed progress on the CBMs and agreed to give negotiators guidelines on confidence-building measures. We discussed substantive issues and agreed to meet again soon.”
He said he had written to the UN Secretary-General last week requesting a meeting in March, and that he planned to convene a National Council to brief political parties and exchange views on the process.
On CBMs, Christodoulides said all measures had been reviewed — progress noted where it existed, delays acknowledged where they were noticed.
The Lydini checkpoint and four other checkpoints, he said, had been proposed some time ago and were discussed as part of the broader CBM conversation. Negotiators would be given guidelines on the checkpoint question.
Asked about the Rizokarpaso school — which he had intended to raise with Erhürman — Christodoulides was brief. “We are not getting into this discussion,” he said, adding that he had a clear goal in mind for these meetings.
That goal, he made plain, remains the resumption of substantive negotiations. “We will meet again very soon to see how we move towards the main goal of resuming substantive talks with full safeguarding of the acquis,” he said.
He pointed again to the 11 December joint statement, in which both leaders reaffirmed political equality on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions. “They say something very specific,” he said.
Foot-and-mouth disease was not discussed at the meeting, and there will be no joint communiqué.