Security Council endorses Secretary-General's intentions to resume discussions on Cyprus.

• Position: United Nations; Javier Perez de Cuellar

The Security Council on 11 October endorsed the Secretary-General's intentions to resume discussions in early November with the two parties in Cyprus and with Greece and Turkey, to complete a set of ideas of an overall framework agreement on Cyprus.

In unanimously adopting resolution 716 (1991), the Council considered that convening a high-level meeting to be chaired by the Secretary-General, in which the two communities and Greece and Turkey would participate, represented an effective mechanism for concluding an overall framework agreement.

The leaders of the two communities and Greece and Turkey were asked to cooperate fully with the Secretary-General and his representatives, so that the high-level international meeting could be convened before the end of 1991. The Secretary-General was asked to report in November to the Council on whether sufficient progress had been made to convene the high-level meeting and, should conditions not be ripe, to convey to the Council "the set of ideas as they will have evolved by that time with his assessment of the situation".

The Council reaffirmed that the fundamental principles of a Cyprus settlement were: the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and non-alignment of the Republic of Cyprus; the exclusion of union in whole or in part with any other country and any form of partition or secession; and the establishment of a new constitutional arrangement for Cyprus that would ensure the well-being and security of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities in...