Venizelos' Statement After Meeting with UNSG's Special Advisor on Cyprus
Greek Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos offered the statement below, after his meeting with UN Secretary General's Special Adviser on Cyprus Espen Barth Eide.
"We had a first, extremely interesting and substantial meeting with the new Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General on Cyprus, Mr. Eide, who has very extensive political experience, as a former Minister for Norway, as well as a very good sense of the international reality.
I set out for him Greece's positions on the Cyprus issue, which are firm, well known, very clear. We agreed to be in collaboration, and I await his visit to Athens.
For us, the solution to the Cyprus issue can be only a viable and functional solution that is accepted, via referendum, by the Cypriot people, the two communities.
Given that this is the objective of the process, we have to use it as the criterion for the substantial content of the solution, which must be accepted, democratically, by the people themselves, and which must be in accordance with the UN resolutions, the High-Level Agreements, the Joint Communiqué of February 2014, and, naturally, the European community acquis. And we must ensure the international legal personality of the Republic of Cyprus, which is a safeguard not only for the Greek Cypriots, but for the whole of the Cypriot people, for all of the citizens of the Republic of Cyprus".
