UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday that meetings between Cyprus’s rival leaders at the organisation’s New York headquarters were “constructive,” even as questions remained about crossing points on the divided island.

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar have been holding talks and had reached a breakthrough on forming a committee on youth and three other topics, Guterres said.

The opening of four crossing points, and the exploitation of solar energy in the buffer zone between the two sides of the island remained unresolved, he said.

“It is critical to implement these initiatives, all of them, as soon as possible, and for the benefit of all Cypriots,” Guterres said.

Following the meeting, Tatar said that the Greek Cypriot side had sought to have a new road built in the buffer zone between the two sides to reach a new crossing — something unacceptable to the Turkish Cypriot side.

“Because of this buffer zone complication, we have not been able to announce the opening of four gates,” he told reporters. “I’m very upset about this.”

Tatar said that he had offered a counterproposal to his Greek Cypriot counterpart that was not accepted.

“We are not losing ground,” he insisted, saying he was hopeful there would be movement on the issue by the time of the United Nations General Assembly high-level meetings in September.

Thursday’s meeting follows one 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.

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 recognized 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.

“I think we are building, step-by-step, confidence and creating conditions to do concrete things to benefit the Cypriot people,” Guterres said in remarks to reporters.

Source: AFP