Cyprus leaders agree weekly meetings amid divergent readings

Politics Cyprus problem Cyprus leaders agree weekly meetings amid divergent readings 39cbd564 71b5 4ad7 8e03 7682f1369079 Relevant News Municipalities say Cyprus is not ready for pay-as-you-throw 28 August 2026 Syria’s Kurdish-led SDF dissolves, ending northeast autonomy 28 August 2026 Cyprus leaders agree weekly meetings amid divergent readings 28 August 2026 Newsroom 28 August 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber This news piece was first published on policypress.cy By Bilun Gunes Nikos Christodoulides and Tufan Erhürman agreed on Wednesday, 26 August to intensify their meetings, holding them once a week or more often as circumstances require, in their first encounter since UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited the island at the end of July. But while both leaders endorsed the same procedural outcome, recorded in a joint United Nations statement, their own accounts of the nearly three-hour meeting diverged markedly. Christodoulides described a good meeting on a good path, Erhürman said the talks had taken place in the shadow of negative developments that, in his view, had undermined the confidence-building the process depends on. What both sides agreed In its communiqué, issued after the meeting at the UN Good Offices offices in the buffer zone near Nicosia airport, the United Nations said the two leaders held a constructive meeting under its auspices and reaffirmed their deep appreciation to Guterres for his recent visit and continued commitment to a settlement. They reviewed progress on the way forward as set out during the Secretary-General’s visit, agreed to intensify their meetings to once a week or more frequently as circumstances require, and agreed to announce on Thursday, 27 August, the members of the steering committee of the Civil Society Advisory Body. The agreement to meet weekly formalises a proposal Erhürman had made in Guterres’ presence during the July visit, and which Christodoulides had said he was ready to accept if it helped prepare an enlarged conference. The personal envoy of the Secretary-General, María Ángela Holguín, is expected back on the island at the end of the first week of September. Christodoulides: a good meeting, on a good path Speaking to reporters on his return to the Presidential Palace, Christodoulides described the meeting as positive and said it had lasted close to three hours precisely because it went well, with the overwhelming majority of the time spent with the two leaders meeting alone. Preparation had begun, he said, on the basis of what Guterres had set out publicly, and the two had discussed the convergences reached in earlier negotiations along with methodology and confidence-building measures. Leaving the talks, he said the two sides were on a good path, based on what the Secretary-General had said. Christodoulides framed the meeting as the first working session of the preparation the Secretary-General had called for, and consistent with the objective he has set throughout, the resumption of substantive negotiations, on the basis of the agreed framework and the convergences reached in earlier rounds. He has described the period following the Guterres visit as particularly critical, requiring continuous and intensive consultations so that the Secretary-General can convene an enlarged conference and a resumption of talks can be announced. Erhürman: a meeting in the shadow of negative developments Erhürman’s written account struck a notably different tone. He said the meeting had taken place in the shadow of negative developments in recent days, and that at the outset he had conveyed to Christodoulides his view that those developments ran counter to the basic logic of confidence-building measures, damaging trust rather than strengthening it, a point he noted the Secretary-General had stressed and that Holguín had underlined as indispensable to holding a 5+1 meeting. On the substance of confidence-building, however, he set out where his side was ready to move. Among the areas Guterres had listed, Erhürman said the Turkish Cypriot side was prepared to make progress on the clearing of mines, new crossing points, the citizenship rights of children of mixed marriages, sport-related matters, and the establishment of joint mechanisms to address irregular migration and disaster response. On methodology, he drew a firm line. Political equality, together with its content, formed the core of the Cyprus problem, he said, and could not be made subject to any trade-off against other issues. Until there was clarity on that, he argued, it would not be possible to make progress on the remaining elements of methodology, including the convergences, or on matters of substance. He said his side would continue to work in good faith in line with its people’s will for a solution, and to convey directly to its interlocutor its concerns about the negative developments in the process, the risks they posed, and what he called tests of sincerity. Two readings of the same meeting The contrast is more than one of tone. Christodoulides has consistently framed the objective as resuming negotiations from the point at which they fell apart at Crans-Montana in 2017, drawing on the convergences and the negotiating record, and his account foregrounds momentum. Erhürman’s account foregrounds conditions: that confidence must not be damaged, and that clarity on political equality must precede progress on the rest. Both positions sit within the preparation Guterres set out when he committed on 29 July to convene another 5+1 meeting, the format bringing together the two sides, the guarantor powers Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, with the United Nations, after adequate preparation on confidence-building, methodology and substance, and taking into account the convergences already achieved, with no date set. But they point to different sequencing, and the newly agreed weekly meetings are the forum in which that difference will be worked through. Erhürman did not specify in his statement what the negative developments he referred to were. The property question, and the treatment of individuals in connection with it, has been a recurring theme in his recent public interventions, which he has framed as a matter of confidence between the two communities. The naming of the Civil Society Advisory Body’s steering committee, due on Thursday, adds a further strand, intended to give civil society a structured role in the process. Its announcement follows criticism from parties and organisations on both sides about who has been consulted during the recent diplomacy. 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