President Ersin Tatar will be meeting with representatives of political parties with seats in the Republic’s Assembly ahead of his visit to New York where he will be meeting with the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The meeting is set to begin at 1 pm at the presidential palace.

Tatar’s invite came after Guterres met the Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides in Belgium on the sidelines of the European Council summit last week.

The Turkish Cypriot side had requested that Guterres also hold a meeting with Tatar, and Guterres promptly invited him to travel to Brussels the following day.

However, Tatar was unable to travel to Brussels, and the New York meeting was scheduled instead.

It is expected that Tatar will inform Guterres of his position on the Cyprus problem, insisting on the acceptance of sovereign equality and equal international status of the island’s two sides as “essential” for the resumption of negotiations.

Meanwhile, the Cyprus issue and the negotiation process were at the top of the agenda during Monday’s plenary at the TRNC parliament.

While the leader of the main opposition Republican Turkish Party Tufan Erhürman criticized what he said were unacceptable preconditions set by the Turkish Cypriot side for the resumption of talks,  Foreign Minister Tahsin Ertuğruloğlu who responded said that the acceptance of sovereign equality and equal international status were not preconditions but the Turkish Cypriot side’s inherent rights.

He said that the Cyprus issue was a matter of status and that the current status quo saw the Greek Cypriot side as a state and the Turkish Cypriots as the community of that state, something he added they were trying to change.

“This status quo must change for talks to begin,” said Ertuğruloğlu, accusing the UN of helping preserve the current state of affairs on the Cyprus issue.