María Ángela Holguín, the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy, had described yesterday’s meeting with Christodoulides and Erhürman as crucial for the continuation of efforts on the Cyprus problem. As she said in an interview published on Sunday, she was waiting for answers from the two sides on the opening of four new crossing points and the demining of areas on either side of the dividing line.
“I hope,” she said, “that this time we can take a step forward on confidence-building measures.” Otherwise: “bye-bye”.
The Secretary-General’s envoy could hardly have put it more simply or clearly. “If nothing happens, my report to the Secretary-General will say: ‘Nothing happened.’ Bye-bye to everyone. Bye-bye to me, bye-bye to Guterres.”
She could not have been clearer.
Holguín Cuéllar has shown a determination that the dozens of male predecessors who represented the UN Secretary-General in Cyprus from 1967 onwards did not appear to possess, as successive leaders here strung them along.
Holguín went on to list the crossing points she expected to see opened if she was not to bid us farewell: Mia Milia and Pyroi, which are important, and Louroujina and Karavostasi, which may not be of much practical value for the purposes for which they are to be opened.
As both Holguín and the UN Secretary-General himself have said repeatedly, the opening of the four crossing points was the prerequisite for convening the expanded five-plus-one meeting, which is supposedly intended to lay the groundwork for negotiations over the final mile left unfinished in 2017.
For four hours yesterday, our two leaders laboured away in front of Ms Holguín — and produced a mouse.
Instead of four crossing points, they agreed on two. And instead of a five-plus-one meeting, Holguín called a two-plus-one.
But the fact that she did not convene a meeting of six and instead called one of three is not really a matter of arithmetic.
Arithmetic belongs to the coming presidential election, which is likely to be decided by the number of old folks President Christodoulides hugs, the number of promises he makes and the number of grants he announces.
We are, after all, talking about the President who does not care about the office but about the country; who does not think about the next election, but the next generation.
The fact that Holguín is sending Christodoulides and Erhürman to a trilateral rather than a six-party meeting makes one thing perfectly clear: she is now handing the Cyprus problem back to the Secretary-General — and handing her two interlocutors over to her boss.
Let him deal with them.
She has confirmed yet again that she is taking part in a dialogue of the deaf.
Ms Holguín did not actually say “bye-bye”.
But she did it without saying it.
And let us not forget that, since May 2025, Holguín has been, for Christodoulides, the person who “knows how to unlock the process”.
He did not say the same about both leaders.
