Jane Hall Lute, the special envoy of the UN Secretary General, holds here on Monday separate meetings with the leaders of the island’s two communities, President of the Republic Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, with a view to investigate the ground for the resumption of the stalled UN-led talks.
Lute will be received by President Anastasiades at 10 o’ clock local time (07.00 GMT) at the Presidential Palace. In early afternoon, she will meet Mustafa Akinci in the northern Turkish occupied part of Nicosia.
Speaking last week at an event at the Presidential Palace, to mark the 44th anniversary of the 1974 Turkish invasion, President Anastasiades reiterated his determination to engage in a dialogue on a Cyprus settlement on the basis of the parameters as determined by the UN Secretary General on 30 June 2017 and clarified on 4 July.
At the same time he expressed the hope that the meetings Lute will have will allow UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to start a new round of peace talks.
On Saturday, the Foreign Minister Nicos Christodoulides said that “our wish and expectation is that these meetings will lead to the conditions which will allow us to resume the talks from where they left off in Crans Montana.”
Cyprus remains divided since the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island. Numerous UN-backed talks, aiming at reunifying the island under a federal roof, have failed to yield any results. The latest round of peace talks took place last July at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana but ended inconclusively.
