Press Releases

The President of the Republic, Mr Nicos Anastasiades, received today, at the Presidential Palace, the UNSG Special Representative in Cyprus, Mrs Elizabeth Spehar.

After the meeting Mrs Spehar told reporters that she had a very good meeting with the President and his associates, adding that “I talked to them about my upcoming trip to the United States, which I think will be quite important.

I will be leaving tomorrow evening for Washington D.C. first of all where I will be meeting with senior officials at the State Department, probably also the National Security Council there to talk about Cyprus and their current views.

Then, I will move on to New York where I will be meeting with senior officials in the Secretariat, including the Secretary-General. I will also be meeting with the five Permanent Members of the Security Council and other Council members and this is all in preparation for the Security Council briefing, which will take place in the afternoon of the 23rd of January.

I will also be briefing the troop contributing and police contributing countries of UNFICYP of our peace keeping mission because they play a very important role in supporting our mission with our military colleagues here on the ground.  

Ultimately, I hope to have a very good session with the Security Council on the 23rd ahead of their consideration of our mandate renewal. The renewal of the UNFICYP mandate is likely to be considerably the Security Council members and decided at the very end of this month. 

So, that is that we were discussing and that is what I will be discussing at length with my interlocutors in the US and I hope that you will all wish me good luck.”

(RM/ML/II)