Christodoulides and Erhurman agree to attend Pyla festival and bicommunal committee meetings

Pyla, Cyprus. President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman agreed during Tuesday’s buffer-zone meeting to attend a bicommunal festival together on Saturday in Pyla, a village in Larnaca district. They also arranged joint participation in upcoming committee meetings and a further bilateral meeting next week.

Joint appearances and UN envoy’s visit

The leaders will attend forthcoming sessions of the bicommunal technical committee on cultural heritage, the bicommunal technical committee on youth and the steering committee on the civil society consultative body before meeting one-on-one again next week.

The United Nations described Tuesday’s discussions as positive and said both leaders were anticipating the forthcoming visit by Maria Angela Holguin, the UN envoy for the Cyprus problem.

Different positions on the agenda

Before Tuesday’s talks, Christodoulides said his 19 discussion points concerning the Cyprus problem remained open for consideration. He said the UN secretary-general and Erhurman knew about them, and that the Turkish Cypriot leader had reserved his response until their next meeting.

Christodoulides said he had submitted the points before they travelled to New York for the UN high-level week in late September. Despite their wish to meet there, he said, a meeting had not been possible.

He said Tuesday’s discussions would cover those matters, along with any additional subjects Erhurman wanted to introduce. Christodoulides added that he had no objection to such topics and was not afraid of dialogue, discussion or negotiation.

He rejected suggestions that the talks would be limited to the seven issues on which UN Secretary-General Guterres had sought progress during his July visit to Cyprus. According to Christodoulides, an agenda required agreement between the two sides, and none had been reached.

Erhurman had earlier said the agenda comprised the seven confidence-building proposals presented by Guterres during his visit to the island in late July.

Hopes for concrete results

Christodoulides said he was approaching Tuesday’s meeting positively and with the political will to resume discussions from the leaders’ previous encounter, which he described as positive and which took place before their New York trip. He reiterated his hope that the talks would produce concrete, positive outcomes.