Date set for Cordovez visit

THE UN Secretary-general’s Special Adviser on Cyprus, Diego Cordovez, will arrive on the island on November 18, it was confirmed yesterday.

According to a Cyprus News Agency (CNA) report from New York, Nicosia will be the first stop on a visit which is also expected to include Ankara, Athens, London and possibly Brussels.

Speaking from Ecuador, Cordovez said his visit would be a “fact-finding” trip and “will of course include consultations with the two leaders to determine the possible nature and timing of future steps.”

Cordovez said he and Secretary-general Kofi Annan “had decided some time ago that I should go to Cyprus”.

Cordovez was the main mediator in the two rounds of face-to-face talks between President Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash in New York and Glion which took place over the summer.

This will be Cordovez’s first official trip to Cyprus, though he has visited the island before.

Cordovez said the UN had a duty to keep knocking at the door of parties in dispute.

“Obviously the knocking has to be such that the doors will open and you will be listened to,” he added.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.