Christodoulides ‘to meet Guterres on September 23’

President Nikos Christodoulides is to meet with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on September 23, according to reports.

The Cyprus News Agency (CNA) on Sunday reported that the pair will meet in New York, with Christodoulides set to travel to the city to speak at the forthcoming UN General Assembly, which will take place between September 24 and September 30.

On Friday, Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar had announced at a press conference that he would meet with Guterres on September 22.

“If a negotiation process is to begin, I will also express my insistence in New York that my demands must be met without fail,” he said.

Christodoulides is set to make his speech to the UN General Assembly on the morning of September 25.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be the third speaker at the event, taking to the rostrum on September 24, while Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will both speak on September 27.

Cypriot government sources had told CNA last month that efforts were ongoing to arrange a tripartite meeting between Christodoulides, Guterres, and Tatar, adding that “something might eventually be achieved”.

Efforts to hold a trilateral meeting between Christodoulides, Tatar, and any representative of the UN have thus far proven fruitless.

Progress seemed to have been made at the start of August, with Christodoulides saying he had accepted a “sounding out” from Guterres for a meeting to be held, adding that the meeting would be aimed at resuming talks to solve the Cyprus problem.

He added that the planned meeting had it had come about thanks to “our own persistent efforts, both in the direction of [Guterres] and the European Union”.

However, Tatar said the next day he had received no such invite and that even if he had, he would not have accepted it.

The government was then forced to clarify that it had not been invited to attend a meeting but that both Christodoulides and Tatar had been “sounded out” over the matter, with elder statesmen from both communities claiming that Christodoulides and Tatar had “fallen into traps” set by one another.

Outside of the Cyprus problem, Cypriot Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos is set to hold a tripartite meeting with his Greek counterpart Giorgos Gerapetritis and his Egyptian counterpart Badr Abdelatty on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The government said the meeting presents an opportunity “for discussions and coordination on strategic matters, addressing common challenges and regional issues of mutual concern, such as developments in the region and aspects of relations between the European Union and Egypt.”