Brussels, 01/07/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 1 July, Espen Barth Eide, the special adviser on Cyprus of the secretary general of the United Nations, announced that the leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, Nicos Anastasiades and Mustafa Akinci respectively, were “now immersed in substantive negotiations”. “Akinci and Anastasiades reiterated their resolve to reach a comprehensive settlement as soon as possible”, Eide said in a statement at the end of a meeting of the two leaders. The spokesperson for the Cypriot government, Nikos Christodoulides, confirmed on 30 June that the “real and difficult negotiations have only just begun”.
“Their focus is on unresolved core issues”, Eide added in a statement. In order to enable the discussions at leaders' level, the negotiators provided an update of their work on “a specific set of core issues across the chapters of governance, property and criteria on territory”, Eide said. He added that Anastasiades and Akinci discussed these issues “in a pragmatic and constructive manner”, making further progress. They provided new guidance to the negotiators, who will meet three more times this week in order to carry forward their work on core issues.
Christodoulides also said that Akinci had become the Turkish Cypriot leader, that the atmosphere was very much better and that each was able to speak “with a person who has the same objective in mind”. “Speaking the same language and having the same vision is very important”, he said.
The next meeting of the leaders of the two communities will be held on Friday 10 July.
Alongside this, Akinci was in Brussels on 30 June and 1 July to meet European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Parliament President Martin Schulz. EUROPE will return to this. (Camille-Cerise Gessant)