UN Personal Envoy María Ángela Holguín returns to Cyprus on Thursday, 10 September, marking her first visit since UN Secretary-General António Guterres came to the island late July.
Politis sources confirmed Holguín will miss the leaders meeting on Wednesday, 9 September, arriving the following day, but will stick around for the next leaders' meeting the following week. During her stay, the UN envoy will also hold a series of meetings with different stakeholders.
According to Ankara-based journalist Yusuf Kanlı, Holguín had initially planned to meet with Guterres in New York and the new British Minister for Europe in London before arriving in Cyprus on Monday, 7 September. However, plans were changed due to illness. She will now come on Thursday and stay on island to attend the next leaders’ meeting, which Kanlı reports is scheduled for 16 September.
Holguín is still expected to meet Guterres at UN headquarters in New York before coming to Cyprus.
What to do with the negotiations’ history
The UN is currently still in the process of preparing a document compiling the body of work undertaken in the negotiations up to and including the talks in Crans-Montana in 2017. No decision has been taken yet on its completion, content or final use.
It remains to be seen how Holguín will utilise the document. Will the envoy keep the document for the UN archives as a reference point? WIl she deliver it to the sides? If so, when and on what terms? Holguín might decide to sequence the next steps in a way that first sees progress on confidence-building measures (CBMs) before getting into issues of convergences, methodology and substance.
If the UN does decide to hand over the document, the personal envoy will have to decide whether delivery will be along the lines of 'FYI' or whether it will denote implicit acceptance of the document's content. Perhaps the UN will seek more overt confirmation from the sides on past convergences, near convergences and disagreements, but also clarity on the point at which negotiations were interrupted.
Searching for signs of progress
The two leaders have committed to weekly meetings to advance discussions on CBMs, methodology and issues of substance. This week’s meeting was postponed following the ferry disaster off the Kyrenia coast on Sunday.
Before leaving Cyprus on 29 July, Guterres said he would convene a meeting on the Cyprus issue in a broader format – including the guarantor powers – once the two leaders made adequate preparations.
To date, the leaders have yet to achieve significant agreement on either CBMs, methodology or substance. In an interview with Politis, Holguín clarified that progress on all three was necessary for there to be forward movement, noting that the UN would not risk holding another 5+1 that ended in failure.
The former Colombian foreign minister also stipulated that CBMs were a “sina qua non” when it came to deciding whether to hold an expanded meeting or not before Guterres’ term ends this December.
