Tatar briefs ministers ahead of planned US visit
PRESIDENT Ersin Tatar has briefed the Council of Ministers on the latest developments in the Cyprus issue ahead of a planned visit to New York.
Mr Tatar is expected to travel to New York for contacts on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly, as he did last year.
President Tatar gave a statement after the Council of Ministers meeting, which took place on Monday. Flanked by Prime Minister Ünal Üstel, Mr Tatar said that he also plans to brief MPs on Thursday, September 8.
Indicating that decisions taken by the United Nations have “lost their historical validity”, Mr Tatar said that “as the TRNC, we think that this [settlement] process should be carried out outside of UN parameters on the basis of two equal sovereign states”, a policy that Turkey “fully supports”.
Stating that there “cannot be a federalbased solution at this stage” and that “we will not accept the Greek Cypriot administration’s
proposals to extend its sovereignty to the TRNC”, Mr Tatar noted that the “new balances in the region are also of great importance for the Turkish Cypriot side’s new policy”.
ANKARA MEETINGS
Meanwhile Foreign Minister Tahsin Ertuğruloğlu held meetings in Ankara earlier this week with his counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Turkish National Defence Minister Hulusi Akar.
Mr Ertuğruloğlu attended a lunch given
in his honour by Mr Çavuşoğlu, which was also attended by delegations from the two countries.
They discussed the “developments regarding Cyprus issue and the envisaged contacts within the scope of the New York visit to be held in September” according to an official statement.
Mr Ertuğruloğlu also attended a meeting hosted by Mr Akar “with the ministers of defence and deputy ministers of friendly and brotherly countries” such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.