UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced that he will convene a new 5+1 conference following today’s joint meeting in Nicosia with the President of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman.
The new conference, for which no specific date has been set — and which is not expected to take place during the week of the UN General Assembly in September — will bring together the island’s two communities, the three guarantor powers, namely Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, as well as the United Nations.
Guterres said he had secured the consent of both sides and the guarantor powers to proceed with a 5+1 meeting, but stressed that it would require adequate preparation in terms of confidence-building, methodology and substantive content. As he put it, “I do not want any more 5+1 meetings without results.”
The UN Secretary-General has been in Cyprus since Monday, with the aim of restarting negotiations between the two sides.
The Treaty of Guarantee has been in force since 1960 and stipulates that the three guarantor powers — Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom — must prohibit any activity aimed at promoting the union of Cyprus with another state or the partition of the island.
The UN Secretary-General visited Cyprus in an effort to revive the process toward the resumption of negotiations between the two sides, just a few months before the end of his second and final term on December 31, 2026.
Sources: Athens-Macedonian News Agency, Cyprus News Agency
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