Vote to renew Unficyp mandate delayed until Friday

The United Nations security council’s vote on whether to extend the mandate of the UN’s peacekeeping force in Cyprus (Unficyp) for another year has been delayed until Friday.

It had been initially foreseen that the vote would take place on Thursday at 3pm New York time, 10pm Cyprus time, but the vote has now been delayed by another day.

Unficyp has a rolling one-year mandate which was most recently extended on January 31 last year, with all 15 security council members at the time, including guarantor powers Greece and the United Kingdom, voting in favour of the motion, which also took stock of the state of the Cyprus problem.

Ahead of the vote, Abukar Dahir Osman, the permanent representative to the UN of Somalia, which took over the security council’s rotating presidency at the beginning of this month, said that no problems are foreseen regarding the renewal of Unficyp’s mandate.

“I do not think there will be any problem. The security council continues to support the secretary-general [Antonio Guterres]’ good offices and remains committed to an approach based on dialogue and de-escalation,” he told the Cyprus News Agency.

He added that the security council “has consistently called for dialogue, restraint and a peaceful, negotiated settlement within the framework of the United Nations”.

Additionally, he stressed the importance of “respecting the existing regime in the buffer zone” which separates Cyprus’ two sides and described Unficyp’s role to this end as “stabilising”.

He also called for “de-escalation initiatives” and “confidence-building measures which reduce tensions”.

The vote will come after reports surfaced that Guterres has been “seriously disturbed” by the lack of progress achieved on the Cyprus problem since last month’s tripartite meeting involving his envoy Maria Angela Holguin, President Nikos Christodoulides, and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman.

Holguin, Christodoulides, and Erhurman held another tripartite meeting on Wednesday, with Holguin having lamented prior to that meeting that “not much progress” had been achieved on confidence-building measures between the island’s two sides since her previous visit to the island.

According to the reports, Guterres had “emphasised that the Cypriot leaders must urgently take steps to facilitate life between the two communities” in the form of confidence-building measures.

It was also reported that he had instructed Holguin to “tell the leaders that if no steps are taken on confidence-building measures, I will absolutely not convene an enlarged meeting” after Wednesday’s tripartite meeting.

Holguin had said after Wednesday’s meeting that “for the time being, there will be no new enlarged meeting”, and that or such a meeting to be arranged, “we need results on the confidence-building measures”.