The United Nations is pushing for a breakthrough when Cyprus’s rival leaders meet in New York next week for a renewed attempt to revive stalled peace talks, a UN envoy said on Monday, July 7th.
Maria Angela Holguin held separate meetings with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar, crossing the island’s UN-patrolled ceasefire line in a day of shuttle diplomacy.
“All this effort the UN is doing is for the prosperity of the island, so that the people have a better life,” Holguin, who was appointed the UN envoy to Cyprus earlier this year, told reporters after meeting Tatar.
The meetings are part of preparations for talks in New York on July 16–17, where UN Secretary-General António Guterres is due to meet both leaders.
They follow a meeting in Geneva in March, which marked the first meaningful progress in years.
At that gathering, both sides agreed on a set of confidence-building measures, including opening more crossing points across the divide, cooperating on solar energy, and removing landmines— steps Guterres described as reflecting a “new atmosphere” and renewed urgency.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when a Turkish invasion followed a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece’s then-military junta. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, declared in 1983, is recognised only by Ankara.
The internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, a member of the European Union, controls the island’s majority Greek Cypriot south.
The last major round of peace talks collapsed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in July 2017.
