Christodoulides and Erhurman meeting ends without joint statement
President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman held talks in the buffer zone after exchanging public remarks on the Cyprus problem.
Nicosia, Cyprus. President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman ended their meeting in the buffer zone on Wednesday without issuing a joint statement, following talks lasting about one hour and 15 minutes.
Exchange before meeting
The meeting followed a brief exchange of terse comments between the two leaders in the media on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
Erhurman responded to comments Christodoulides made to newspaper Yeniduzen, in which the president said the two leaders could “write history together” on the Cyprus problem.
Erhurman said this was “no easy task” in the current political environment on the island.
Erhurman’s concerns
Erhurman said initiatives were being advanced through agreements with various countries, particularly Israel and Greece, which he said disregard Turkish Cypriots and jeopardise lasting peace and stability on the island and in the region.
He also said that, domestically, rather than implementing new confidence-building measures, trust was being eroded by issues including the Barcelona process, festivals, the property question, and what he described as one-sided and biased European Parliament resolutions driven by Greek Cypriot MEPs.
Under these circumstances, he said it was evident to Turkish Cypriots, Greek Cypriots and the international community that “writing history together” was not an easy task.
Christodoulides’ response
Before travelling to the meeting on Wednesday morning, Christodoulides said that if there was real political will, the two leaders could write history, adding that he was attending the meeting in that spirit.
“If there is no political will, obviously, many other things will be said,” he added.
Regarding the cancellation of events in the north, including the FC Barcelona children’s football camp and the Exit music festival in Kyrenia, Christodoulides said such developments had not occurred for the first time.
He said that as long as the “illegal state of affairs” continued, such developments would occur and were “very normal”.
This news item was generated automatically by Cyprus Inform from publicly available materials. Report an error →