Christodoulides ready to meet Erhurman ‘every day’ until UN general assembly

President Nikos Christodoulides on Monday said that he would be ready to meet Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman “every day” between now and when both leaders are set to travel to New York to attend the United Nations general assembly’s “high-level week” later this month. He said he hopes for there to be “several more” meetings between himself and Erhurman between now and September 22, when the “high-level week” begins, and added that “I am fully prepared if necessary to meet every day until we go to New York”. The pair are expected to meet this Wednesday, with last week’s meeting, initially planned to have been the first of weekly meetings to be held by the pair, having been cancelled following the sinking of a passenger ferry off the coast of Kyrenia. UN envoy Maria Angela Holguin was also expected to travel to Cyprus this week, but now will not, due to illness. Related Articles • Holguin cancels Cyprus visit due to illness • Ustel: Is the goal to isolate Turkish Cypriots from the world? • Leaders agree to weekly meetings • Talat: Greek Cypriot side has always avoided cooperation • Erhurman: Attempts to render Turkish Cypriots invisible do not help solution efforts • Dana’s briefing goes ahead, Erhurman says ‘this is something the world needs to see’ On Monday, the Cyprus News Agency reported that Greek Cypriot chief negotiator Menelaos Menelaou and Erhurman’s undersecretary Mehmet Dana had held a “good discussion” earlier in the day. Like most political matters in the north, focus on the Cyprus problem evaporated in the week following the ferry’s sinking, though Christodoulides said beforehand that he and Erhurman were “discussing various issues to do with confidence-building measures”. “What I mentioned to the Turkish Cypriot leader I also said publicly, that we are ready for confidence-building measure which will strengthen the great effort to reunify our homeland, to resolve the Cyprus problem,” he said. On the matter of crossing points, he said that he and Erhurman had on Wednesday “discussed the issue of the four crossing points” as a package, which had first been devised as an idea during the enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem held in the Swiss city of Geneva in March last year. “For our part, during [United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’] recent visit, we accepted what the secretary-general himself mentioned as a reasonable compromise proposal. At the end of the day, there was no result, but we continue the effort,” he said. Erhurman: Efforts are being made to make Turkish Cypriots walk away from table Previously, Erhurman had described efforts made by the Greek Cypriot side to dissuade diplomats in Nicosia from attending a briefing given by his undersecretary Mehmet Dana, and to bring about the cancellation of international events in the north, as being aimed at making the Turkish Cypriots “walk away from the table”. “From our perspective, neither Barcelona, nor the festival, nor the attempts to obstruct Mehmet Dana’s briefing to ambassadors in the buffer zone are matters of the past, closed, or behind us. Neither are the ‘legal’ initiatives regarding property issues, nor the one-sided, biased European Parliament resolutions,” he said. He added regarding Dana’s briefing that “the fact that the ambassadors attended sufficiently demonstrates” that any reason given by the Greek Cypriot side for them not to attend the briefing “is not a legitimate one which can be considered by the international community”. “Despite the ongoing talks, the Greek Cypriot leadership is continuing its efforts to render the Turkish Cypriots invisible. Despite the ongoing talks, we will continue both our efforts to counter these attempts by the Greek Cypriot leadership, and our efforts to make our people visible,” he said. On this front, he said that “these efforts have, and always will have, visible and invisible aspects”, before offering criticism both for the Greek Cypriot leadership, and for more nationalist circles of Turkish Cypriot politics. Talks on the matter of crossing points have remained deadlocked over the question of whether to break up the package of four locations upon which the sides had agreed after the meeting in Geneva last year. The Greek Cypriot side proposed removing Louroujina, northwest of Larnaca, from the package of four, instead opening crossing points near Athienou, and in the eastern Nicosia suburbs of Mia Milia and Aglandjia, and the Turkish Cypriot side flatly refused to entertain any discussions which did not include all four locations. Holguin: Confidence-building measures an ‘indispensable condition’ Guterres had said at the end of his visit to Cyprus in July that a new enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem will be convened “after adequate progress” is achieved on the matters of confidence-building measures, the meeting’s methodology and the substance of the talks. More recently, Holguin had stressed that the implementation of confidence-building measures is an “indispensable condition” to be fulfilled ahead of an enlarged meeting, which will involve the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and the UN itself. “Confidence-building measures should not be seen merely as symbolic steps which improve the atmosphere between the two communities, but rather as practical tools which test the viability of a future political order,” she told Turkey’s Anka news agency.