UNSC head says Holguin only found ‘there is no common ground for Cyprus solution’

The head of the UN Security Council on Monday said that UN Secretary-General personal envoy Maria Angela Holguin has only found there is no common ground for a Cyprus solution.

President of the Security Council for the month of July and Permanent Representative of Russia, Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia said: “The personal envoy of the UN Secretary General, former Colombian Foreign Minister Holguin, travelled to the island, spoke with both sides, only to find that the parties are far from a compromise solution that might be found.”

Speaking at a UN press briefing and asked by the Cyprus News Agency (CNA), Nebenzia said that “it is unfortunate, but the last opportunity we had was in 2017 in Crans-Montana, which unfortunately was lost and since then there has been no visible, tangible progress in the Cyprus negotiations”.

Also, he added that the UN security council is seeing the hardening of the positions of some of the plans of both sides.

“Now there is the issue of extending the mandate of Ms. Holguin, but this is absolutely the prerogative of the Secretary General, because she is his Personal Envoy. She is not the envoy of the Security Council, nor of the Special Representative for Cyprus. We shall see. In fact, it is up to him (Secretary General) to make the decision,” the Russian diplomat said, while as for the regular briefing of Colin Stewart by Unficyp, he said, “it will be on developments on the ground, on the issues he is facing”.

“I don’t expect anything special from this briefing,” he added.

Earlier, Stewart met with President Nikos Christodoulides, where the former expressed concern over militarisation of the buffer zone.

They also exchanged views on migrants stranded in the buffer zone, which enervated Christodoulides saying it was not Stewart’s “mandate” to comment on these issues.