Cyprus-Forum.com

by **halil** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 3:18 pm

Talat and Christofias met again today for the 44th time as part of the negotiation process launched in September last year.

The two leaders continued to take up the issue of federal executive under the chapter of governance and power sharing today.

The meeting was the fourth to be held since the start of the second round of the talks which were first launched in September last year.

Today’s meeting started with a tete-a-tete meeting between the two leaders.

Later the leaders moved onto the plenary session where they continued to discuss the issue of federal executive.

In a short statement after the meeting, the UN Special Representative to Cyprus Taye Brook Zerihoun said that today’s meeting had been held under a positive atmosphere and the two leaders would continue their discussions on the executive tomorrow.

He also said that the Greek Cypriot Side submitted revised papers on the issue of executive during today’s meeting.

Expressing the UN’s support to two sides, the UN Special Representative said that both sides wanted to move faster but added that the issues were complicated.

“Nevertheless we are hopeful for further progress in the coming days” he said.

The UN special Representative also said that a group of Bi-communal Civil Society Representatives will be present at the start of tomorrow’s meeting to express their solidarity to the solution process.

The CSO representatives will be presenting a letter of solidarity to the two leaders.

Meanwhile in a separate development yesterday, the two sides cancelled respectively military exercises in light of the ongoing negotiations.

The Turkish Side’s decision to cancel the annual Toros Military exercise came first followed by a similar announcement from the Greek Cypriot Side that it was cancelling its own military exercise Nikiforos.