Press Releases

The purpose of my visit was to visit UNFICYP. Therefore, yesterday I had a visit with UNFICYP’s team to buffer zone and today I had a meeting with President Anastasiades. I congratulated him for his re-election and for his inauguration. I also congratulated the new Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was present at the meeting and the discussion was exclusively about UNFICYP.

 

I thanked the President for the support by the authorities of Republic of Cyprus to UNFICYP. We talked about the important role that UNFICYP is playing according to its mandate in helping to diffuse tension, in helping stability, and also in this role of prevention of tension and helping in liaison work or mission with the other side.

 

So this was really the core of the discussion and I was very appreciative for President Anastasiades’s support to UNFICYP.

 

Question: Is there a scenario of downsizing the personnel of the UN in Cyprus?

 

Answer: As you know the Security Council had requested a strategic review of UNFICYP and by the way we have been conducting strategic reviews on most of our peacekeeping operations and this something that we continue. All peacekeeping operations need to evolve. We need to make to make sure that are as best equipped as possible in their resources, in their mandate, in their finance to fully comply with their mandate. So we did that strategic review with UNFICYP and we are currently implementing. As a result of the review we are convinced that UNFICYP will be fully equipped and resourced to implement its mandate and will be in a better position to do it because we are proceeding to certain adjustments which will I think enable the mission to be even more effective in its prevention role.

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RM/ML/SCH