UN chief visits Cyprus to revive unification talks

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is due in Cyprus on Monday, where he will meet with rival Cypriot leaders in a bid to revive reunification talks that collapsed in 2017.

Guterres's envoy, Maria Angela Holguin, said the UN chief hoped to encourage Cypriots and their leaders to embrace peace negotiations.

"The mission of the secretary-general is to facilitate, encourage the people and the leaders to look forward to a negotiation," Holguin told reporters Monday after meeting Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.

She said Guterres "is visiting Cyprus after pushing, supporting Cyprus for almost 10 years. So... I hope we can have some progress."

The visit comes after elections in Turkish-speaking northern Cyprus in October that pro-unification candidate Tufan Erhurman won in a landslide against Ankara-backed outgoing president Ersin Tatar.

It also marks the first trip by a UN chief since Guterres' predecessor Ban Ki Moon visited in 2010.

On Tuesday, Guterres will meet Christodoulides and Erhurman separately on either side of the ceasefire line, followed by a joint dinner, ahead of a trilateral meeting on Wednesday.

"This is a very important visit," government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said. "Our aim and hope is that it will serve as the starting point" for further negotiations.

He said Guterres was personally undertaking the initiative to get Cyrus talks back on track.

He expressed hopes that the UN chief's continued commitment, combined with developments in EU-Turkey relations, could "create an opportunity for progress".

"If there is even the slightest glimmer of hope or window of opportunity, we will make use of it," said Letymbiotis.

Turkey has thus far been opposed to unification efforts, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan instead calling for "the coexistence of two states" on the island.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey invaded the north of the island in response to a coup in Nicosia backed by Greece's then-military junta.

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, declared in 1983, is recognised only by Ankara.

Decades of UN-backed talks have failed to reunify the island.

The last major round of peace talks collapsed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, in July 2017.