CYPRUS PRESIDENT CALLS ON AKINCI TO RETURN TO DIALOGUE
President Nicos Anastasiades has called on Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci to return to the negotiating table for a Cyprus solution with a productive stance, in order to continue the momentum of the talks and maintain all the positive elements that have been achieved in the past 22 months during the UN backed talks.
Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades (L) – Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci (R)
He also calls on Akinci to return to help reconvene the Conference on Cyprus as it was agreed last January during the first Conference in Geneva.
The Presidency of the Republic issued a statement on Tuesday, regarding the meeting the President had earlier today with the Bicommunal Peace Initiative. The President expressed his readiness for a new meeting to be set with the Turkish Cypriot leader to resume the talks from the point they were suspended to reach a just and viable solution on the basis of the February 11, 2014 agreement between the two communities, UN resolutions and the unanimous decisions of the National Council.
He also told his guests, as he has publicly stated, that the decision taken recently by the Cyprus House regarding the Union Referendum was not appropriate and unnecessary.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Anastasiades and Akinci have been engaged in UN-backed talks since May 2015 with an aim to reunify the island under a federal roof.
Akinci walked out of a meeting in mid February, in the framework of the UN-led negotiations on the Cyprus problem. Anastasiades and Akinci had elaborated earlier on in that meeting their positions on an amendment passed by the Cypriot Parliament which includes a once a year reference of no more than ten minutes at schools to the 1950 referendum held in Cyprus, advocating enosis (union with Greece).
President Anastasiades has described the House amendment “wrong” and called on Akinci to return to the negotiating table. Akinci demands that the amendment is revoked before returning to the negotiating table.
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