Christofias said in his statement in the General Assembly’s general debate that there had been some progress in the negotiations, but not enough to express confidence about a positive outcome. In his statement on the same day, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the Secretary-General should play a role in “bridging the differences which the parties themselves cannot resolve” and that a solution should be submitted to a referendum in the spring of 2010 at the latest. He stressed that if an agreement was not reached, normalization of the status of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus would become a “necessity”.
