UN envoy on Cyprus Maria Angela Holguin Cuellar smiles to the press after a meeting with Cypriot President Nicos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus January 30, 2024. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou
NICOSIA (Reuters) - An envoy for U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres started contacts on divided Cyprus on Tuesday, seeking to break years of stalemate in peace talks.
U.N. envoy Maria Angela Holguin, a former Colombian foreign minister, was on her first visit after being appointed envoy on Jan. 5 with a mandate to explore the resumption of negotiations.
"I come from a country that lived through 50 years of conflict ... I think I can collaborate and do all my best for a good result for Cyprus," she told reporters, referring to civil war in Colombia which struck peace in 2016 with the main rebels.
Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup and remains a source of friction between fellow NATO military alliance members Greece and Turkey.
Countless mediation attempts have failed. The last round of U.N.-sponsored negotiations collapsed in disarray in 2017 over the role of Turkey in a post-settlement Cyprus.
Holguin, who was Colombian foreign minister from 2010 to 2018, met with President Nikos Christodoulides, the Greek Cypriot leader, and Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar.
She was also due to meet civil society groups.
"The less I say the more I can work," Holguin said.
Tatar, who has headed a breakaway state in north Cyprus since 2020, wants a two-state settlement.
That is rejected by Greek Cypriots, who cite previously-agreed accords and U.N. resolutions that the island reunite under a federal umbrella with a strong central government.
At present Cyprus's internationally-recognised government is comprised solely of Greek Cypriots, a legacy of a constitutional breakdown in 1963 when a power-sharing administration with Turkish Cypriots crumbled amid violence.
(Reporting by Michele Kambas; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
