Cypriot communities close to trade off stage of reunification negotiations

 The estranged communities of Cyprus are "probably not far away" from a give-and-take stage in their negotiations to end the four-decade-old partition of the eastern Mediterranean island, a United Nations official said on Tuesday.

Espen Barth Eide, the personal emissary of the UN Secretary General on Cyprus, pointed out that this would be the last stage before an international conference to put its stamp on any agreement.

"We would like to refer to it as a win-win outcome," Eide said.

He made his remarks after separate meetings he had with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, representing the Greek Cypriot community, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, to plan a joint meeting on Wednesday.

"Tomorrow it will be a crucial meeting because we need to see how to use these coming days optimally in order to prepare for a return to the international format," Eide said.

He was referring to the reconvening on an international conference in Geneva which ended inconclusively in mid-January.

The two Cypriot leaders and Greece, Turkey and former colonial power Britain, the three countries having the guarantee rights over Cyprus, failed to conclude an agreement.

Eide could not say when the Geneva conference would be reconvened, saying that this will happen when the time seems ripe to put the finishing touches on a Cyprus solution.

"We need to understand which things need to be done here in order to successfully reconvene... You can always have a meeting, but the purpose of the next meeting should be that we conclude something," said Eide.

He cautioned that concluding an agreement may be influenced by other issues, which may guide the way Greece and Turkey think about the Cyprus question.

"We need to be aware of this bigger picture while we need to focus on the need to solve the Cyprus problem," he concluded.

source: Xinhua