Roundup: Cypriot community leaders agree on new negotiations in Geneva
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E-mail Xinhua, June 5, 2017
NICOSIA, June 5 (Xinhua) -- The leaders of the Greek and Turkish Cypriot community leaders agreed to resume negotiations at a meeting in Geneva later this month after their talks were stalled over the terms of the meeting, the United Nations announced on Monday.
The agreement came at a four-hour dinner which UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres hosted for Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci at the UN Headquarters in New York.
Guterres said in a statement he read as he was flanked by the Cypriot leaders late at night in New York and made available in Nicosia early on Monday morning, that he and the two leaders "agreed on the need to reconvene the Conference on Cyprus in June".
"All agreed that the chapter on security and guarantees is of vital importance to the two communities. Progress in this chapter is an essential element in reaching an overall agreement and in building trust between the two communities in relation to their future security," the statement said.
This part of the statement seemed to go a long way towards satisfying Anastasiades' demand that the conference in Geneva should deal with the issue of security and guaranties as a matter of priority.
"These are issues which President Anastasiades raised persistently," a Greek Cypriot diplomatic source said after the dinner, pointing to the need for a well-prepared Geneva Conference.
Akinci had insisted that the Geneva summit should be a give-and-take on all pending issues making up the internal aspect of the Cyprus problem.
Cyprus was split into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north in 1974 when Turkey sent troops to the eastern Mediterranean island after a coup engineered by the military rulers of Greece. Since then Turkey maintains a large number of troops in Cyprus.
Guterres said that his special adviser on Cyprus, Espen Barth Eide, will engage with all participants "in preparation of a common document to guide discussions on security and guarantees".
Eide is expected to contact the two Cypriot leaders and the three so-called guarantor powers of Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom to prepare a jointly accepted document on security and guarantees.
Guterres did not announce a date for the reconvened Geneva Conference on Cyprus, but Greek Cypriot sources in New York estimated that this would be during the last 10 days of June.
"The leaders agreed to continue in parallel the bi-communal negotiations in Geneva on all other outstanding issues, starting with territory, property and governance and power-sharing," the statement said.
It added that the two leaders "agreed that all issues will be negotiated interdependently and that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed".
Guterres concluded by saying that he "will reach out to the other participants of the conference -- Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom and the European Union as an observer". Enditem
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