Roundup: Cyprus' community leaders reported working on new convergences

Cyprus' Greek and Turkish Cypriot community leaders were reported on Friday to be working on new convergences in their eight-month long negotiations for a reunification agreement.

Espen Barth Eide, the U.N. Secretary General's special adviser on Cyprus problem, was reported by state television as saying after separate meetings with the two leaders that there are many issues on which they have concurred and are now trying to establish the extent of their agreement.

"There are important things that we have to clarify and we will try to do this now in order to prepare for when we can move into a final phase someday in the future," Eide was reported as saying.

"So far there's been a large number of understandings between the two leaders but we see that we need to turn them into crystal clear text," he added.

Eide said the understanding reached is on the four main chapters: property, economy, EU matters, governance and power sharing.

"Another important thing is that both leaders agree that the agreement for the solution of the problem will be in line with European Union law," he said.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci started negotiations in May 2015, in a new bid to again bring together the two communities.

They are scheduled to meet again on Monday to continue taking stock of their talks up to now and to put to paper the points of agreement.

The two Cypriot communities were split apart when Turkey occupied the northern part of the eastern Mediterranean island in 1974, reacting to a coup organized by the military rulers of Greece at the time.

"Things are now at a critical stage... We are trying to establish the extent of an agreement. We are looking into the details because as you know devil is hiding in details and this applies here as well," Eide said.

Akinci took exception at the decision of the Cypriot government to proceed with a third round of licensing for natural gas exploration in Cyprus' continental shelf.

He warned that going into the phase of exploratory drilling may scuttle the negotiations, adding that this may be the case again.

He was alluding to the suspension of a previous round of negotiations after Turkey sent warships into Cyprus' exclusive economic zone, marked under the U.N. Law of the Sea.

Akinci said he would raise the issue with President Anastasiades on Monday. Endit