NICOSIA, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- A United Nations envoy will return to Cyprus early in January to continue consultations on restarting stalled negotiations on the reunification of the eastern Mediterranean island, Cypriot government spokesman Prodromos Prodromou said on Tuesday.
Jane Hol Lute, a personal envoy of U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, completed her current consultations with two more separate meetings with Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci.
Lute is trying to formulate the terms of reference for further peace negotiations on Cyprus after their inconclusive end at a conference in Switzerland in July, 2017.
Prodromou, who is a close consultant of Anastasiades and a member of his close team at the meetings with the UN envoy, said the consultations will continue and Lute will come back early next year.
"The consultations continued today in the same creative and productive atmosphere," he said.
Lute left Cyprus after talking to the High Commissioner (ambassador) of Britain to Cyprus, who requested a meeting.
Britain, the late colonial power in Cyprus, along with Greece and Turkey, are jointly guarantors of the independence and status quo of the island under 1960 treaties that led to the end of British rule.
The latest round of negotiations on Cyprus ended inconclusively after two and a half years of talks during which considerable progress had been achieved.
Guterres called off the negotiations after Turkey told him that Ankara had no intention of giving up guarantee rights or withdrawing its occupation troops from Cyprus.
As if to pour cold water on any prospects for peace, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told the national assembly on Monday that Turkey will never accept a zero-guarantee and zero-troop arrangement in Cyprus and urged "those who dream such an eventuality to wake up from their dream, because it will never come true."
Turkey partitioned Cyprus after it occupied 37.5 percent of its territory in a 1974 military operation, in reaction to a coup by the military rulers of Greece at the time.
