The Japan Times - UN chief meets rival Cyprus leaders, mulls prospects for talks

With less than six months until the end of his term in office, Guterres flew to the divided Mediterranean island on the first visit by a UN secretary general since Ban Ki-moon's visit in 2010.

"I had two very constructive meetings with the leaders of the two communities," he said after separate talks with President Nikos Christodoulides of the Republic of Cyprus and his counterpart from the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), Tufan Erhurman, who was elected in October.

Guterres said he was there to show "solidarity with the people of Cyprus" and his commitment to "finding, or helping to find -- both with the Cypriots but also with the guarantors -- a solution".

Decades of UN-backed talks have failed to reunify the divided island, with the last major round of peace talks in Switzerland collapsing in July 2017.

Christodoulides' spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said the pair held "a substantive and sincere discussion" and expressed hope it would lead to concrete developments by the year's end when Guterres's mandate ends.

For his part, the Turkish Cypriot leader also said he held a "constructive meeting" with Guterres, adding that the aim was "to do something different" to avoid the failures of 2004 and 2017.

"We are working on a new and realistic methodology, let's say, which will help us reach our common aim to do something different this time after the experiences of 2004 and 2017," Erhuman said.

- 'The UN can't impose peace' -

After follow-up meetings with civil society figures and others, Guterres was to host the pair for a private dinner in the evening.

On Wednesday, there will be a trilateral meeting followed by a press statement.

"The UN cannot impose peace. Only Cypriots, through their leaders, can build it," Guterres wrote on X shortly after landing at midnight on Monday night.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Ankara occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup seeking union with Greece.

Today it comprises the TRNC, which is only recognised by Ankara, and the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, an EU member that controls the island's majority Greek Cypriot south.

Sources close to the Turkish Cypriot government said they were "cautiously optimistic" about the talks.

The two rival leaders first met in December, when they signalled a fresh commitment to reviving the long-stalled peace process in the presence of Guterres's envoy Maria Angela Holguin.

That meeting came two months after Erhurman won a landslide victory in elections in northern Cyprus, beating the Ankara-backed outgoing president Ersin Tatar, who had called for a two-state solution.

During his campaign, Erhurman, who advocates reunification of the island, had pushed for the resumption of negotiations with the Greek Cypriots.

Observers say no meaningful progress is possible without Ankara's backing because of Turkey's status as a guarantor power.

Turkey's position has hardened in recent years, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan firmly backing a two-state solution over UN-led efforts to reunify the island as a bi-communal federal state.

S.Yamada--JT