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Transcript of Remarks by Special Representative of the Secretary-General Tayé-Brook Zerihoun following 17 March Meeting

Good Afternoon. As is customary, the two leaders met privately for over an hour-and-a-half. Following this tête-à-tête, for the next two hours or so they had discussions on EU matters on the basis of the work done by the experts last week, towards the end of the week and early this week. The leaders have agreed to meet again next Tuesday in the morning of the 24th of March to continue the discussions on EU matters. Before that, there will be two back-to-back meetings, tomorrow in the afternoon at 3 o’clock and then on Thursday at 4 o’clock, a meeting of the representatives and the experts to prepare the ground for the meeting of the leaders next Tuesday.

Question: What is your impression on the talks concerning EU matters?

Answer: Well, it’s been a good discussion. As you know, EU matters was one of the issues on which there has been quite a lot of convergence and on which there was a joint paper from the working group. So the discussion, as I said, was thorough and substantive, and it’s an engaged process.

Question: How long do you envisage these discussions on EU matters to continue?

Answer: I don’t know, frankly, but certainly they have agreed to meet next week on this issue. They could decide to suspend discussions and allow the experts and the representatives to continue to narrow the gaps as they have done with governance and move on to economic matters the following week or following meeting. It’s possible that may well be the case.

Question: On the property issue, are they going to come back to that?

Answer: Yes, eventually they will come back to that. But it is now left at the level of experts and the representatives. Indeed this is the process, it is a rolling start, not everything should be or could be taken up by the leaders, so they deal with issues and then they refer them back to the working groups and representatives with guidance and to bring options to them for final decision.\"

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