NICOSIA, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- A United Nations official started consultations in Cyprus on Saturday in an effort to reach a solution to the long-standing Cyprus issue.

Jane Hol Lute, acting as personal envoy of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, conferred with the resident representative of the United Nations in Cyprus, Elisabeth Spehar, and a team of UN officials dealing with the issue, the Cyprus News Agency reported on Saturday.

The report said they reviewed developments since a previous visit by Lute in October, ahead of separate meetings she will have with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades on Sunday and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci on Monday.

Anastasiades and Akinci have been locked in negotiation for two and a half years before it collapsed in Switzerland in July, 2017.

Their talks were aim at reuniting the eastern Mediterranean island by bringing an end to the international problem.

Turkish troops occupied the northern part of Cyprus in a 1974 military operation in reaction to a coup by the military rulers of Greece at that time.

Lute has been instructed by Guterres to draft a document setting out the terms of reference of renewed negotiations, to be based on a six-point outline he submitted before talks collapsed last year.

The United Nations has hinted that this would be the last effort to conclude a Cyprus deal and Anastasiades has said that Cyprus will not be the same after the end of a new round of negotiations. Enditem

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