NICOSIA (Reuters) – Cyprus’s president on Wednesday said he was committed to resuming reunification talks with Turkish Cypriots, and said any deal should be based on U.N. resolutions.
The United Nations has called an informal gathering of Greek and Turkish Cypriots, along with stakeholders Turkey, Britain and Greece in Geneva on March 17-18, to discuss a way forward in breaking a deadlock in talks which stalled in 2017.
“Our goal is one: to resume talks from where they left off … on the basis of the agreed (U.N.) framework. We are not discussing anything else,” President Nikos Christodoulides told journalists in Nicosia, Cyprus’s ethnically-split capital.
He has been invited to attend the March talks as leader of the Greek Cypriot community alongside Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, the head of a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in north Cyprus recognised only by Turkey.
The island was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek inspired coup, following years of sporadic violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots almost immediately after independence from Britain in 1960.
Greek Cypriots seek a federal union of two ethnic zones, while a two-state deal advocated by Turkish Cypriots would imply recognition of the breakaway north, rejected outright by Greek Cypriots. Both sides have recently doubled down on their positions.
The conflict has long been on the agenda of the United Nations, which has kept a peacekeeping force on the island since 1964.
The most recent round of high-level peace negotiations, which collapsed in Switzerland in 2017, aimed to forge a federation, the formula defined in U.N. resolutions.
Christodoulides was elected in 2023 with support from parties that typically take a hard line on solving the division of Cyprus, but has promised to break the deadlock over peace talks.
Under the leadership of Tatar, elected in 2000, the position of Turkish Cypriots and Turkey has changed towards advocating a two-state deal.
(Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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