Guterres is neither giving up nor deviating from the UN mandate

The United Nations failed on 29 April 2021 to bridge disagreements over restarting peace talks on ethnically-split Cyprus but Guterres stressed he is not giving up and would not deviate from his UN mandate .

“The truth is that at the end of our efforts, we have not yet found enough common ground to allow for the resumption of formal negotiations,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a news conference in Geneva after a three-day summit. “As you can imagine, this was not an easy meeting,” he said.

For decades, the United Nations has been attempting to piece Cyprus back together as a two-zone federation – the only thing the two sides had, until recently, been able to agree to in principle.

Nicos Anastasiades, said Guterres had told the Turkish Cypriots he could not deviate from his U.N. mandate.

“He (Guterres) made it clear that he could not seek recourse, as was requested by the Turkish Cypriot and Turkish side, to the (United Nations) Security Council for a change to terms of reference,” Anastasiades said, adding there was “not a single chance” of switching the basis of talks.

The talks were attended by the foreign ministers of Britain, Turkey and Greece, so-called “guarantor powers” for Cyprus that still maintain intervention “rights”.

Guterres said the United Nations would make a fresh attempt in “probably two or three months”.

“Unfortunately today we are not able to reach the agreements that we would wish to reach, but we are not going to give up,” he said.