UN Security Council renews mandate of peacekeeping mission on Cyprus for another year

By Serife Cetin

NEW YORK (AA) - The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution Tuesday that renewed the mandate of its peacekeeping mission in Cyprus (UNFICYP) for another year.

The resolution also welcomed UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' recent appointment of Maria Angela Holguin Cuellar as his personal envoy to Cyprus.

It reaffirmed the "primary role of the UN in assisting the parties to bring the conflict and division of the island to a comprehensive and durable settlement."

The force, one of the UN's longest-running peacekeeping missions, has been stationed on the island since 1964.

Cyprus has been mired in a decades-long dispute between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, despite a series of diplomatic efforts by the UN to achieve a comprehensive settlement.

Ethnic attacks starting in the early 1960s forced Turkish Cypriots to withdraw into enclaves for their safety.

In 1974, a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the island led to Türkiye’s military intervention as a guarantor power to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence. As a result, the TRNC was founded in 1983.

It has seen an on-and-off peace process in recent years, including a failed 2017 initiative in Switzerland under the auspices of guarantor countries Turkiye, Greece and the UK.

The Greek Cypriot administration entered the European Union in 2004, the same year Greek Cypriots thwarted a UN plan to end the longstanding dispute.