The lack of trust between the two sides is perhaps the one important missing element at the moment that is preventing us from moving forward on the Cyprus issue, UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Cyprus, Colin Stewart, said on Monday afternoon.
In remarks following a meeting with the T/C leader, Ersin Tatar, Stewart said that the UN Secretary General still believes that a way must be found to move forward.
He said that in the meeting ahead of his trip to New York, he discussed a number of issues with Mr. Tatar and first of all expressed the UN's solidarity with the Turkish Cypriots over the terrible fire that occurred recently and his appreciation to all those members of the international community, including the Greek Cypriots, who contributed immensely [TO THE EXTINGUISHING].
"I think [THIS IS] an excellent illustration of solidarity among Cypriots when something like this arises. And yes, we talked about the need to build greater ties across the island, economic, social and so on," the Special Representative said.
He added that he discussed this issue this morning with Anastasiades and that building greater ties would increase trust.
"I think it is probably the one important thing that is missing at the moment that is preventing us from moving forward on Cyprus," he said.
Asked "whether he intends to include in his report the need to respect sovereignty and equality in Cyprus," Mr. Stuart replied that the Secretary-General still believes that we need to find a way forward for a political process and added that at the moment there is no common ground between the two parties.
He added that the UN's efforts are to create conditions that could lead to such common ground.
He added that the UN's efforts are to create conditions that could lead to such common ground.
To another question on the issue of missing persons and "whether Greek Cypriots who confessed to the murders of innocent Turkish Cypriots will be tried," he said he had no information on this issue.
"As you know, there is the Committee on Missing Persons ( MMP) which has an established mechanism to deal with such matters. There are a lot of past wounds on this island, on both sides, that need to be addressed and this is one of the many things that leads to mistrust and makes it difficult for the political process to move forward."
Source: CNA
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