Leaders agree on schedule of meetings

15:16 PRESIDENT Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu have agreed on a schedule of meetings until January, when they will have new talks with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Speaking after today’s meeting, which lasted an hour, UN Secretary General’s Special Representative in Cyprus Lisa Buttenheim said that their next meeting would take place on Monday.

“The idea is to have, in principle, one leaders’ meeting a week and then there will also be discussions between the UN with the leaders respectively. And this was a formula that was found to be useful by the two at the latest meetings that were held in New York. It will be an intensive phase but we are not calling them ‘all-day’ meetings,” she said. 

Asked whether there would also be one meeting a week with a UN representative, the UN officer said that they still had to work out the schedule of the other meetings.

“Today what was agreed by the leaders is their meetings with each other which will take place until January and roughly one a week. In some cases there might be two meetings in one week,” she said.

She also said that on Monday the leaders would discuss the governance and power-sharing chapter.

Speaking at the Presidential Palace, after the meeting, Christofias said that today’s meeting was purely procedural. He added that they fixed the dates of the meetings with Eroglu and the UN.

The UNSG suggested the two sides meet him again in mid January, following another round of intensive negotiations. The aim, he added, was to bridge the gap which divides the two sides on fundamental aspects of the Cyprus problem, something which was difficult bearing in mind the differences, “but not impossible”, he added.

(Cyprus News Agency)

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