Newly appointed UN Secretary General’s representative in Cyprus Colin Stewart will bring the divided island’s estranged two leaders together at a cocktail in Nicosia on Tuesday.
Both President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar have responded positively to the social get-together under UN-auspices at Ledra Palace in the buffer zone.
But analysts have no high expectations that suspended negotiations aiming to reunite the island, divided since a Turkish invasion in 1974, will resume soon.
An informal trilateral meeting on the Cyprus problem between Anastasiades, Tatar and UN chief Antonio Guterres took place in New York in September but recorded no breakthrough in the peace process.
Stewart, a Canadian national who is also head of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), formally assumed his duties in Nicosia on Monday.
He succeeded Elizabeth Spehar, also a Canadian, who completed her assignment on November 30.
Until recently, Stwewart served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) (2017-2021).
