The UN Good Offices’ website featuring the latest updates on the UN-sponsored Cyprus talks currently gives the accord of 110 meetings of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders, which translates into a frequency of one meeting in every 9 days. Yet, when the RoC celebrated its 50th anniversary in the Autumn of 2010, the island was still cut into two parts by the cease-fire line that was first marked in 1964.
Progress in the talks has been frequently prevented by elections, be it parliamentary or presidential, which took place either in the Republic of Cyprus (RoC), the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), Greece or Turkey. The latest Greek Cypriot parliamentary elections of May 22, 2011 were already the 5th such elections since the revival of the bi-communal negotiations in September 2008, shortly followed by the June 12th parliamentary elections in Turkey. As a result, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon took on a more active role and stepped in on the premise to speed up the negotiation process by inviting leaders of both communities to a tripartite meeting in New York in November 2010. In his critical report to the Security Council released after the meeting, the Secretary General labeled the unification process as “frustratingly slow” and urged the leaders not to waste the “historic opportunity” to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion.
To read the Policy Update by Lenka Peťková, click here.
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