Cyprus talks failed to find common ground, UN says

Three days of talks between Cypriot leaders yielded not enough common ground to resume formal talks on a settlement, the United Nations said Thursday.

This week’s summit in Geneva — involving governments on both sides of the divided island and the guarantor countries Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom — was the first since talks collapsed in 2017.

“The truth is that at the end of our efforts, we have not yet found enough common ground to allow for the resumption of formal negotiations,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said at a press conference.

But he added that he would “not give up” and that the parties had agreed to hold another meeting aimed at finding common ground “in the near future.”

Multiple attempts at resolving the Cyprus conflict have failed since Turkey’s 1974 invasion split the island into a Greek Cypriot south — the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, an EU member state — and a Turkish Cypriot north, whose statehood is recognized only by Ankara.

Expectations for progress at this week’s summit had been low. Following the election of anti-reunification candidate Ersin Tatar as president last year, the Turkish Cypriot government and its allies in Ankara have stepped up calls for a two-state solution. The Republic of Cyprus and Greece continue to back reunification.

“This was not an easy meeting,” Guterres acknowledged. He added: “We are determined to do everything we can to move on” and that efforts would continue “to create the best possible conditions for the next meeting, which could happen in the next two to three months.”

Tatar said there was no point in holding formal talks without recognition of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus as a state and that he would not drop the two-state proposal.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades said that this proposal would never be accepted. “There is not one single chance of Turkey or the Turkish Cypriot side succeeding in this. This was something which was pointed out by the [U.N.] secretary-general,” he said.