GENEVA: UN chief Antonio Guterres was to meet the rival Cypriot leaders for dinner on Monday ahead of informal talks aimed at finding a “way forward” on the divided island’s future.
Guterres was to dine with President Nikos Christodoulides of the Greek-speaking, internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar in Geneva.
On Tuesday the three will meet for talks at the United Nations, alongside Britain, Greece and Turkiye — the three guarantors of the Mediterranean island’s security since 1960.
“This meeting is being held in the context of the secretary-general’s good offices’ efforts on the Cyprus issue,” a UN spokeswoman told AFP.
“The informal meeting will provide an opportunity for a meaningful discussion on the way forward.”
Since a 1974 invasion by Turkiye triggered by an Athens-backed coup, the island has been divided between the Greek-speaking south and the Turkish Cypriot north, which unilaterally declared independence in 1983 but is recognized only by Ankara.
The Republic of Cyprus is an EU member state. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus covers about a third of island, including parts of the capital Nicosia.
Decades of UN-backed talks have failed to reunify the island.
Greek Cypriots in 2004 overwhelmingly rejected a UN-backed reunification plan in a referendum.
The last round of full-on peace talks, in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, collapsed in 2017.
Cyprus issue
In a televised address on Saturday, Christodoulides said he was heading to Geneva “with absolute seriousness and with the aim of conducting a substantive discussion that will pave the way for the resumption of negotiations for the resolution of the Cyprus issue.”
“We are ready and well prepared to be constructive... to engage in meaningful discussions, and to achieve an outcome that will keep the process active,” he said.
Christodoulides held a national council meeting of Greek Cypriot political party leaders in Geneva on Monday.
“There is consensus, a constructive spirit of unity, and a shared goal: to ensure that this multilateral conference serves as a springboard toward breaking the deadlock and restarting negotiations,” Cyprus government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis told reporters afterwards.
“We are preparing for multiple scenarios, ensuring that in every case, the president has concrete initiatives and proposals.”
Meeting in buffer zone
Following the dinner, the talks proper are set to begin on Tuesday at the UN Palais des Nations.
Nameplates had been set out, with Guterres on one side of the central table, opposite the two Cypriot leaders, who will sit next to each other.
Flanking Guterres, nameplates were set out for Greek Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, and for Britain’s Europe minister Stephen Doughty.
In October last year, Guterres hosted an informal dinner with Christodoulides and Tatar in New York.
The rival Cypriot leaders also met in January to discuss opening more crossing points across the divided island as part of trust-building efforts.
They met in the buffer zone that has split the island for decades.
UN chief to meet rival Cyprus leaders
https://arab.news/n9jbc
UN chief to meet rival Cyprus leaders
- Cyprus has been divided between the Greek-speaking south and the Turkish Cypriot north since 1974
- Decades of UN-backed talks have failed to reunify the island
UK interior minister insists asylum reforms ‘fair’ amid blowback
- Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders
- Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow”
LONDON: Britain’s interior minister doubled down Thursday on her tough stance on immigration despite criticism from charities and unease within the ruling Labour party that it is shedding left-wing voters.
Shabana Mahmood announced that asylum seekers who break the law or work illegally will be thrown out of government-funded accommodation and lose their support payments.
The policy forms part of a major overhaul of migration rules announced late last year and modelled on Denmark’s strict asylum system that aims to slash irregular migration to the UK.
Mahmood argued in a speech that she was “restoring order and control” to Britain’s borders and that her overhaul of the asylum was “firm but fair,” adding she would open new and safe legal routes.
But Amnesty International called the latest measure a “punitive blow” that “risks forcing people into destitution, homelessness and exploitation while they wait for their claims to be decided.”
Mahmood’s reforms are widely seen as an attempt to stem support for the hard-right Reform UK party, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage.
It has topped opinion polls for a year, in part because of the government’s failure to stop thousands of migrants from arriving in England from northern France on small boats.
But her stance has also been credited with contributing to Labour losing support to the progressive Green party, which won a local election in a traditional Labour heartland last week.
Mahmood said there was a middle path between Farage’s “nightmare pulling up the drawbridge and shutting out the world” and Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s “fairy tale of open borders.”
Her reform that makes refugee status temporary, including for accompanied children, came into force this week.
The status will be reviewed every 30 months, with refugees forced to return to their home countries once those are deemed safe.
They will also need to wait for 20 years, instead of the current five, before they can apply for permanent residency.
She also announced earlier this week that the government would stop issuing education visas to nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan.
It said there had been a surge in asylum applications by students from those countries and almost 135,000 asylum seekers in total had entered the UK using legal routes since 2021.
