Next meeting between leaders and Ban Ki Moon

THE United Nations officially announced yesterday that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon will next meet with the two leaders, President Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu, on July 7 in Geneva.

According to the announcement, Ban has stressed to both leaders that they must speed up their progress “to achieve a mutually acceptable and lasting settlement on Cyprus as soon as possible.” He also expects the leaders to take advantage of this meeting as well as the lead up to it, in order “to work jointly and concretely towards reaching that objective.”

The UN Secretary-General only recently made similar comments in which he urged both sides to take a more reconciliatory stance towards a solution, provoking widespread condemnation. Both officials and parties were in uproar as they believed it was unfair of Ban to equate the two sides’ responsibility in the matter and called on him to be more cautious in his statements.

The meeting follows two previous ones between the leaders and Ban on November 18, 2010 in New York and January 26, 2011 in Geneva

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.