Eide: 12 January will be a historic day
12 January, 2017Akıncı met with Johnson
12 January, 2017The international conference for the Cyprus talks will be held at the UN Office at Geneva today, following 3 days of negotiations between the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots.
The conference will be hosted by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and will be the first international conference on Cyprus issue since 2004.
The guarantor countries – Turkey, Greece and UK – will participate in the conference. They will be represented by the Foreign Minister of Turkey Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kocias and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Boris Johnson respectively.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is expected to meet with President Mustafa Akıncı and Greek Cypriot Leader Nikos Anastasiades before the conference. Negotiators Özdil Nami and Andreas Mavroyannis will also attend the meeting.
The International conference is expected to start at 11.00 in Geneva (13:00 TRNC) at the UN Office. Both sides’ delegations, which are made up of 25 people, will accompany the leaders. There will be a break at 13:00 for a reception which will be attended by the members of the UN Security Council, the Cypriot Leaders, the negotiation delegations, representatives of the guarantor countries, the political parties and the EU delegation.
The conference will continue with a working lunch.
Yesterday’s meetings continued until 20:30 last night.
The leaders submitted their maps last night, according to the Presidential Spokesperson Barış Burcu, who made a short statement at the UN Office. Burcu said that the maps were submitted in the presence of UN Secretary General’s Special Advisor on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide and map experts from the UN and both the Turkish and Greek Cypriots. Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot experts studied the maps along with UN experts to ensure that they are in accordance with the consensus reached in Mont Pèlerin.
Burcu stated that “I want to highlight that the Greek Cypriot side’s proposal was 28.2% and the Turkish Cypriot side’s proposal was 29.2%. The maps have been prepared according to these percentages, and have been submitted to the UN.”