No extended meeting planned on Cyprus issue, Guterres says

NICOSIA

Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman met with Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides in the buffer zone on Sept. 17, 2026. (AA Photo)

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that no 3+1 or 5+1 meeting on the Cyprus problem would be held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 28, stressing that more work was needed to create the conditions for a successful meeting.

Asked whether he believed the necessary conditions had been established, Guterres said no such meeting would take place during the General Assembly.

He said any future meeting should be properly prepared to ensure that it had genuine prospects of producing an outcome, adding that “we cannot repeat the mistakes of the past.”

Guterres also reaffirmed the U.N.’s commitment to advancing efforts to resolve the Cyprus problem.

“We are determined to move things forward and we are determined to do everything possible to make this happen when the conditions are met for the meeting to be successful,” he said.

His remarks came as Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhürman and Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides met in the buffer zone on Sept. 17 as part of ongoing efforts to advance the Cyprus settlement process.

The meeting followed their Sept. 9 talks, which lasted about an hour. Erhürman said after that meeting that the two sides had failed to reach an agreement on new confidence-building measures.

The Cyprus dispute has remained unresolved for more than half a century despite repeated U.N.-brokered peace initiatives. The most recent comprehensive round of negotiations collapsed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in 2017 without producing a settlement.