The United Nations has announced today that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will be travelling to Cyprus at the end of the month to help advance negotiations between Greek and Turkish Cypriots to reunite the island.
Rumours about a possible Guterres visit had been circulating for the past week and were confirmed today at a press briefing in New York by his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.
“I want to share some upcoming travel for you from the Secretary-General, in addition to his trip China. The Secretary-General will travel to Cyprus from 27 to 29 July, as part of his good offices mission and his strong demonstrated commitment to the Cyprus issue.
“He will meet with the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders, as well as other stakeholders, and discuss efforts to advance the peace process and support stability on the island, including through the work of the UN Peacekeeping Mission on the ground there (UNFICYP), Dujarric said.
UNFICYP has been stationed on the island since 1964, soon after the Cyprus conflict first began, making it one of the UN's longest-running peacekeeping missions and despite concerted efforts by international community, it has not been possible to resolve the decades-old dispute between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot that has seen the island split into a Turkish north and a Greek south.
Guterres’ visit to Cyprus will be the first by a UN Secretary-General in 16 years. The Secretary-General, whose term as ends at the end of this year, has been keen to kickstart the stalled peace process. He came within touching distance of an historic deal at Crans Montana in 2017, before the then Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades walked away from the opportunity.
In 2004, Greek Cypriots also overwhelmingly rejected the UN Annan Plan to reunite the island, while Turkish Cypriots had voted in favour of the plan days before the island became a European Union Member State.
Guterres launched a new UN Cyprus initiative earlier this year, holding an informal meeting with the key stakeholders in Geneva in March, five months after Turkish Cypriots had elected a new leader, Tufan Erhürman.
The new President of the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus had campaigned last autumn on the need to return to the agreed UN parameters for a federal solution, claiming that the incumbent Ersin Tatar’s two state solution had “wasted” five years for Turkish Cypriots, who had “gone backwards” demanding “sovereign equality” and recognition of the TRNC, which had been snubbed by virtually the entire international community.
Since March, the UN Secretary-General's personal Cyprus envoy, Maria Angela Holguin, has held a series of meetings in Cyprus as well as with the island’s three Guarantor Powers – Greece, Turkiye, the United Kingdom – and with officials in Brussels to assess whether the political conditions exist for meaningful negotiations to resume.
Photo, top, of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (right) meeting Tufan Erhürman, in New York on 11 Feb. 2026. Photo © UN Photo / Manual Elias
