Roundup: Leaders of estranged Cypriot communities to meet UN Secretary General

The leaders of the estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities have been invited to jointly meet in Switzerland with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, they said on Thursday.

Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades, representing the Greek Cypriots, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci said in separate tweets that they have received an invitation for a joint meeting in Davos.

Both said they have accepted the invitation.

"A short while ago I received an invitation from UNSG for a meeting with Mustafa Akinci in Davos, which I accepted," Anastasiades wrote in Greek on his twitter account a couple of hours after having another meeting with Akinci on the Cyprus problem.

"During today's negotiations we received an invitation from UNSG for a joint meeting with Anastasiades, which I gladly accepted," Akinci said in English on his own twitter account.

The meeting will take place on the side-lines of the annual World Economic Forum at Davos which will be held during Jan. 20-23.

Anastasiades and Akinci started talks almost eight months ago in search for a solution to reunifying Cyprus. They met for several hours in Nicosia on Thursday in the presence of United Nations officials brokering the negotiations and will meet again after returning from Davos.

Anastasiades said later the talks have reached a stage of establishing areas of convergences and difficulties.

He said both himself and Akinci are determined to respond to the concerns of their communities for a solution ending the division of the island.

He added today's meeting was highly useful as it involved a review of the process and recorded points of convergence and distance between the two sides on all issues.

"The goal is to put pen to paper on these critical issues, where the problems are, where we are close, where we still have ground to cover, so we can focus on them methodically over the coming months," said Anastasiades.

But Anastasiades sought to dampen any undue expectations from the Davos meeting.

He said there will be no wider conference involving any of the guarantor powers of Cyprus-Greece, Turkey and Britain - as it is premature to discuss abrogating the guarantee treaty of the 1960, which demands the consent of all three countries and the island's two communities.

He also said the Davos Forum is primarily an economic gathering and he will be meeting other leaders and officials from the international economic community. Endit