President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) Ersin Tatar stated on Monday that “to restart negotiations, our sovereign equality and equal international status must ‘certainly’ be recognised.”
Tatar hosted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s Personal Envoy to Cyprus, María Angela Holguín Cuéllar, who arrived in TRNC on Sunday. Cuéllar was accompanied during the hour-long meeting by Colin Stewart, Chief of Mission of the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus.
She expressed her delight to come to the island of Cyprus for the second time and aimed to reflect on the Cyprus issue by meeting with political parties, non-governmental organisations and representatives of different sides of society.
The TRNC president revealed that he told Cuéllar about the expulsion of Turkish Cypriots from the “Republic of Cyprus,” a partner from 1960 to 1963.
“To restart the negotiations, our sovereign equality and equal international status must certainly be recognised. There is a message in the ‘sovereign equality and equal international status’ thesis that we have advocated for 3 years. The Turkish side has hitherto approached every agreement positively. Despite the Annan Plan Referendum, the Turkish side faced embargoes and hindrances.”
Noting that the TRNC was overcoming obstacles set by the Greek Cypriots and the European Union, Tatar noted that none of the promises made to the Turkish Cypriots in the Annan Plan referendum had been fulfilled.
Cuéllar, who is pursuing her contacts in Northern Cyprus, is expected to meet Tatar again on 14 March.
