Holguin remains ‘optimistic’ over prospect of enlarged meeting before year’s end

United Nations Cyprus problem envoy Maria Angela Holguin said that she remains optimistic over the prospect of an enlarged meeting on the Cyprus problem being held before the end of the year, after she met President Nikos Christodoulides at the presidential palace. “Yes, I am optimistic … If there are some advances in the [confidence-building measures], in methodology, and in some substance, and if we can get this, we are going to have the 5+1,” she said, with the term “5+1” used to describe an enlarged meeting involving the island’s two sides, its three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the UN.

Regarding Friday’s meeting and her planned meeting with Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman, she said that “we are pushing and continue pushing”, and that “this is what the secretary-general asked of me, is until the last minute of his mandate, he wants to see if we can move forward on the Cyprus issue”. Incumbent UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will leave office at the end of the year, with it still not yet clear who will replace him. It was Guterres who had first that enlarged meeting will only be achieved “ after adequate progress ” is achieved on confidence-building measures, the meeting’s methodology and the substance of the talks. Holguin on Friday made no reference to efforts to choose Guterres’ successor, focusing instead on the content of her meeting with Christodoulides, which she described as “good”, before saying that she had wished to “listen from Christodoulides about his meetings with Tufan”, which have been taking place on a weekly basis since the summer. Of those weekly meetings of Cyprus’ two leaders, she said that “I think it has been very good that they have these kinds of meetings together and I would still hope to see if…