Loose ends and tight lips all round on Cyprus talks

Little is being divulged publicly on the Cyprus problem at present, with United Nations envoy Maria Angela Holguin now off the island but expected to return, and with hopes still high and details still scarce over the prospect of an enlarged meeting being convened this summer. Deputy government spokesman Yiannis Antoniou told CyBC radio on Wednesday morning that Holguin has now travelled to New York, and is expected to meet UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and “other associates” so as to “examine the next steps” to be taken in advance of an enlarged meeting. However, Guterres is currently not in New York, but in London, where he has travelled to attend Climate Action Week. It has not yet been made public when he intends to return to New York. With Holguin and Guterres therefore on opposite sides of the Atlantic ocean, it now looks unlikely that her originally forecast return to Cyprus before the end of this month will come to pass, given that she also intends to travel to Brussels for contacts before coming back to the island. It is currently known that Holguin will meet European Council president Antonio Costa while in Brussels, though a spokesperson for the European Council was unable to confirm or deny to the Cyprus Mail whether a date has been set for that meeting. Additionally, it is not yet known whether she will hold other contacts while in Brussels. The Cyprus Mail reached out to both the European Commission and Nato to query whether plans have been made for meetings with Holguin, and received responses from neither. The question of whether Holguin may meet a representative of Nato arose after reports over the weekend suggested that security guarantees in a post-solution Cyprus may be offered by Nato. Newspaper Politis reported that those guarantees may comein the form of the new Cypriot republic’s accession to Nato, alongside the presence of Nato troops from Turkey, Greece, France, the United Kingdom and the United States on the island. Additionally, one of Cyprus’ three guarantor powers, Turkey, is set to host a Nato leaders’ summit on July 7 and July 8. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will host the summit in Ankara, with the prime ministers of the island’s other two guarantor powers, Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece and Sir Keir Starmer of the UK also expected to attend, alongside Antonio Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Starmer is likely to resign within ten days of that summit to be replaced as prime minister by outgoing Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, though this change is not expected to impact the UK’s stance on the Cyprus problem. When asked by the Cyprus Mail about the prospect of the proposed Nato guarantees or a “looser” solution to the Cyprus problem reported by Politis, Antoniou refused to be drawn, saying that the content of any given solution is not currently a matter for discussion. This stance largely echoes that which was taken by Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman on Monday. He said then that while “there are some ideas being put forward at the moment”, none of those ideas have reached “a level of significance which would warrant public discussion, let alone acceptance”.