NICOSIA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The leaders of the estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities have agreed to meet on April 16 for the first time about ten months after the negotiations collapsed, the United Nations said on Friday.
A statement by the UN Secretary General's special representative in Cyprus Elizabeth Spehar said Cypriot President Anastasiades, who represents Greek Cypriots, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, will have an informal meeting at her residence in the buffer zone dividing the Cypriot capital Nicosia.
Akinci said ahead of the announcement that no negotiations will be held at the meeting, but added that a solution to the Cyprus problem requires that the leaders of the two sides talk to each other.
Anastasiades had complained several times that Akinci was delaying an answer to his request of a social meeting between them to discuss how they could move forward.
Negotiations for a Cyprus solution, which have been going on for more than 40 years, collapsed in acrimony in Switzerland in July 2017 after the sides disagreed on key issues.
The Greek side complained that Turkey refused to pull its troops from the northern part of the Cyprus island and rescind intervention rights under a 1960 treaty and the Turkish side accused Greek Cypriots of being unwilling to share power.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres had sent the leaders to reflect over the reasons for the failure of the negotiations and come back to him with a joint suggestion as to how they could be resumed.
The lack of a solution to the Cyprus problem is one of the reasons for the stalemate in Turkey's bid to join the European Union and a source of acrimony between the two sides.
