Tripartite meeting not open-ended, says President, National Council meets on Monday

The tripartite meeting set for October 15, between President Nikos Christodoulides, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar in New York, is not open-ended, said President Christodoulides on Thursday. He has convened a National Council meeting for Monday at 11am, in order to brief the leaders of the parliamentary parties on developments in relation to the tripartite meeting.

In statements upon his arrival at the Cyprus Forum and referring to the Summit of the nine Mediterranean member states of the European Union (MED9) that will take place in Pafos next week, the President said that the leaders of the nine countries will be joined by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and that he has invited the King of Jordan to attend the Summit, in order to discuss developments in the region “and how we as the EU and the Republic of Cyprus can help to address this difficult situation.”

He was responging to questions from journalists that the tripartite me
eting is not open-ended.

“There is nothing that is open-ended. The discussion is being held with one purpose only: to see if there are prospects for the resumption of talks and I consider the initiative of the Secretary General to be very important,” President Christodoulides noted.

He added that it was something we had been pursuing for a long time. “Beyond that, we are focused on getting an outcome. For us, the goal is the resumption of talks on the basis of the agreed framework and from where we left off in Crans-Montana,” he said.

President Christodoulides pointed out that “we are waiting to see, we are preparing for the meeting”, which he described as a “positive development”. “We will come to this dinner with great resolve and we will do everything possible to achieve positive results,” he said.

The President commented that “it is positive that this dinner is taking place. Beyond that, I don’t want to say too much, I’m focusing on the discussion, on the outcome. Having a result, that’s what I’m inte
rested in,” he noted.

Asked about geopolitical developments, he said that we are in a region of particular geostrategic importance, a region where we are seeing unpredictable developments. “We are a state that maintains friendly relations with all our neighbours. We are the state that represents the European Union in the region,” he said.

The President said that next week a very important meeting of the nine Mediterranean Member States of the European Union (MED9) will take place in Cyprus. “The President of the (European) Commission will be with us. I have invited the King of Jordan to attend this meeting to discuss all these developments and how we, as the EU and as the Republic of Cyprus, can help to deal with this difficult situation, because it is a very difficult situation”, he said.

Source: Cyprus News Agency