Next week’s informal dinner to be attended by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, President Nikos Christodoulides, and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar is a “positive development”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Friday.
Speaking in Paphos ahead of the European Union’s ‘Med9’ summit, she said the EU “continues to fully support efforts to resume peace talks for a comprehensive settlement to the Cyprus problem”.
Such a solution, she said, “must be found within the United Nations’ framework, on the basis of a bizonal, bicommunal federation with political equality”.
The informal dinner is set to take place in New York next Tuesday, with government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis having described it as the “first obvious step”.
He later said that the meeting had also come about as a result of the Greek Cypriot side’s “persistence, consistency, and continuity”.
Tatar had said he had agreed to the meeting on the condition that there be “no formality in the context of talks on the Cyprus problem”.
He said the meeting would be “informal and without an agenda”, and that as such, it would be “beneficial to everyone”.
“I couldn’t’ say no to that, so I said yes,” he said.
