The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cyprus met with AKEL General Secretary and Member of the House of Representatives Stefanos Stefanou in the Houses of Parliament on 29th January.
Present at the meeting were the Chair of the APPG for Cyprus Bambos Charalambous MP, APPG President Sir Roger Gale MP, APPG Member Rachel Hopkins MP, the High Commissioner of Cyprus in the UK Kyriacos Kouros, President of the National Federation of Cypriots in the UK Christos Karaolis and General Secretary of AKEL in Britain, Andreas Gregoriou. Mr Stefanos’ delegation also included AKEL representatives Stavri Kalopsidiotou and Toumazos Tsielepis.
The meeting included discussions on the Cyprus issue and the prospects for the resumption of talks.
Following the meeting, Mr Stefanou said:
“We have stressed that, bearing in mind the fact that Turkey and the Turkish Cypriot leadership have officially moved towards a two-state solution, the only realistic way for us to be able to achieve the resumption of negotiations and have a realistic chance of resolving the Cyprus problem is to continue the negotiations from the point where they were interrupted in Crans Montana in 2017, to preserve the convergences that have been achieved after long and hard efforts, and at the same time to negotiate on the outstanding issues of the Guterres framework.
We have also spoken together with the friends of Cyprus about the need for the British Parliament, and with their own intervention in various ways, to move towards exerting influence on Turkey to change its negative stance, to return to the negotiating table with the aim of finding a solution to the Cyprus problem.
Finally, we thanked the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Cyprus for its continued positive stance on Cyprus and the solution to the Cyprus problem, and at the same time we exchanged views on how its members can continue to help in this direction.”