NICOSIA, July 6 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations has embarked on another initiative to probe the possibility of restarting negotiations on the long standing Cyprus problem, a UN official said on Friday.
"And so, we will be preparing for some quite important weeks ahead," Elizabeth Spehar, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Cyprus said after meeting Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades.
She also met separately in the Turkish occupied part of Nicosia with Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci.
Spehar said her talks focused mostly on an upcoming visit by a UN official, Jane Holl Lute, in July, to act as a personal envoy of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
Lute was designated earlier this week by Guterres to consult with the parties involved in the Cyprus problem with the aim of establishing their intentions following the collapse a year ago of an international conference in Switzerland.
She said her talks with Anastasiades and Akinci touched upon an upcoming UN Security Council meeting to extend for a further six months the mandate of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), one of the longest serving peace forces, set up in 1964.
urkey occupied part of Cyprus in 1974, in reaction to a coup by the military rulers of Greece at the time.
