国际英语新闻:UN envoy extends consultations on restarting Cyprus negotiations

NICOSIA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A United Nations envoy tasked to restart the stalled Cyprus peace negotiations extended her consultations in Nicosia by scheduling further meetings on Monday, a statement by President Nicos Anastasiades said on Sunday.

Jane Holl Lute, who is acting as personal envoy of U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, had separate meetings on Sunday with Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci and Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades, but no statements on the state of the consultations were made.

Lute's meeting with Anastasiades was an unusually long one, lasting more than three hours.

Even before meeting Lute, Anastasiades announced that he would have another meeting with the U.N. envoy early on night of Monday.

Lute will earlier meet with Akinci for a second time discussing the terms of reference for resuming the negotiations which ended inconclusively 18 months ago.

The fixing of further meetings has somewhat revived hopes for an eventual agreement to restart the peace negotiations, though Cypriot Foreign Minister Nicos Christodoulides has said that early talks depend on Turkey's will to allow an immediate start of the negotiations.

He also suggested that further talks on Monday would be an indication of progress in Lute's consultations.

Christodoulides met on Friday in Bucharest with Turkey's Foreign Minister and said that during the 15-minute talk they discussed aspects of the Cyprus problem, including the timing of further negotiations.

He did not give any indication for a change in Turkey's policies on Cyprus.

Lute is scheduled to return to New York on Tuesday to report to the U.N. Secretary General on the outcome of her latest consultations in Cyprus.

The U.N. Security Council last week extended the mandate of the peace keeping force in Cyprus, UNFICYP, for a further six months and called on Guterres to inform it by April 15 on the outcome of efforts to resume the negotiations for the reunification of Cyprus and the re-integration of Turkish Cypriots, now living in seclusion, into the state.

Cyprus was partitioned when Turkey occupied its northern part in a 1974 military operation, in response to a coup organized by the military rulers of Greece at the time.