Hammond: “The UK is also waiting for a solution in Cyprus as well as Turkey”

The UK’s Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, Philip Hammond said: “The UK is also waiting for a solution in Cyprus as well as Turkey. As the UK we also support this.”

Cyprus may be nearing a breakthrough in resolving its four-decade old partition, Britain’s Foreign Minister said on Thursday, as momentum builds for a possible progress in peace talks this year.

“I’ve made several visits to Cyprus over the last few months, meeting members of both communities, and I am optimistic that we may be on the brink of a breakthrough in resolving this dispute,” Philip Hammond told reporters in Athens.

On Monday, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said Ankara would fulfil its responsibilities to ensure the resolution this year of the dispute over Cyprus.

Hammond said Britain, Cyprus’s former colonial master and a guarantor of the island’s independence alongside Greece and Turkey, had no interest in maintaining the current tripartite model.

“If the two communities in Cyprus agree a model that requires Britain to play no role, we will be quite happy to play no role. If the model they develop requires Britain to play a role, then we are happy to consider playing any role the two communities ask us,” he said.

“What we want is to see a sustainable solution in Cyprus and we will do everything in our power to bring that about.”