By Catarina Demony and Michele Kambas
LONDON (Reuters) – The foreign minister of breakaway northern Cyprus said on Thursday an informal meeting of Greek and Turkish Cypriots called by the United Nations to discuss a way forward in breaking a deadlock between the two sides would lead nowhere.
At the U.N. meeting, set to take place in Geneva from March 17-18, Greek and Turkish Cypriots will be joined by Turkey, Britain and Greece, but minister Tahsin Ertuğruloğlu said “not too much importance should be attached” to it.
The island of Cyprus was split by a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup, following years of sporadic violence between Greek and Turkish Cypriots that began almost immediately after independence from Britain in 1960.
Greek Cypriots seek a federal union of two ethnic zones, while a two-state deal advocated by Turkish Cypriots would imply recognition of the breakaway north, rejected outright by Greek Cypriots. Both sides have recently doubled down on their positions.
“The Greek Cypriots want to use the opportunity (meeting) to… pick up the negotiation from where they were left off (in 2017),” Ertuğruloğlu told Reuters in an interview in London. “For us, it is an opportunity to reiterate how we see the way forward: two separate, sovereign, equal states.”
He added: “There is no likelihood of establishing a partnership with the Greek Cypriots so why bother? Why insist on a proven failure of a formula? It’s our question to the United Nations.”
Cyprus’s President Nikos Christodoulides said on Wednesday he was committed to resuming reunification talks with Turkish Cypriots, and said any deal should be based on U.N. resolutions.
The conflict has long been on the agenda of the U.N., which has kept a peacekeeping force on the island since 1964.
The most recent round of high-level peace negotiations, which collapsed in Switzerland in 2017, aimed to forge a federation, the formula defined in U.N. resolutions.
“In the absence of a common ground, what can anybody realistically expect from this meeting in Geneva?” Ertuğruloğlu said.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony in London and Michele Kambas in Nicosia; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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