A senior U.N. official on a three-day visit to the divided island of Cyprus met with the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) President Ersin Tatar on Monday amid a controversial road construction project.

Tatar and Miroslav Jenca, U.N. assistant secretary-general for Europe, Central Asia and the Americas, met in the capital Lefkoşa (Nicosia) for talks, which lasted one and a half hours at the presidential building.

Colin Stewart, the head of the U.N. Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, and Ergün Olgun, the Turkish Cypriot president’s special representative, also attended the meeting.

Jenca’s visit came after U.N. peacekeepers on Aug. 18 intervened in road construction work to link the Turkish Cypriot village of Pile in the buffer zone with the rest of the TRNC.

Speaking to reporters following the meeting, Tatar said he informed Jenca that the "Pile-Yiğitler road construction plan is a humanitarian project and was born out of necessity."

Tatar told Jenca that U.N. peacekeepers’ move to prevent the construction of a humanitarian road connecting the Pile and Yiğitler villages is "unacceptable."

For his part, the U.N. official told reporters: "We hope that there will be common ground in the future for the resumption of peace talks that benefit the entire people."

Jenca, who will be on the island of Cyprus between Aug. 27 and 29, held a separate meeting with the Greek Cypriot administration leader Nikos Christodoulides early on Monday.

Reiterating commitment

Following his meeting with Christodoulides, Jenca assured U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was paying very close attention to the situation and would use all means at his disposal to help reach an agreement to heal the island’s ethnic split.

According to Jenca, he and Christodoulides discussed ways of resuming talks with Turkish Cyprus that have remained stalemated since 2017, when negotiations at a Swiss resort collapsed.

Jenca said Guterres would "use all his good offices to help this process to find a solution to the Cyprus issue."

Greek Cypriot administration government spokesperson Constantinos Letymbiotis said Jenca conveyed Guterres’ "dedication to efforts for a resumption of negotiations" and that the world body continues to look for ways to get negotiations back on track.

Cyprus’ division returned to the fore earlier this month when a group of U.N. peacekeepers obstructed Turkish Cypriot crews working on a road that would connect Pile, a village inside the U.N.-controlled buffer zone, to Yiğitler (Asos) village in the island’s north.

An altercation between U.N. peacekeepers and Turkish Cypriot crews received international condemnation. It prompted to issue a statement underscoring "the need to avoid any further unilateral or escalatory actions by either party that could raise tensions on the island and harm prospects for a settlement."

Türkiye has accused the U.N. of bias over the humanitarian road construction and called for "impartiality."

The road expansion is strategically important for residents as it will give them more options to reach Pile, where Turkish and Greek Cypriots live together.

Residents of Pile will be able to travel shorter distances and will not have to pass through British bases when crossing to the Turkish side when the 11.6-kilometer (7.2-mile) construction and repair work ends. The first 7.5 kilometers of the road will pass through the village of Yiğitler, and the second 4.1 kilometers will pass through Pile.

Cyprus was split in 1974 after Türkiye as a guarantor power, prompted by a coup aimed at Greece’s annexation of the island, launched a military intervention dubbed the Cyprus Peace Operation to protect Turkish Cypriots from persecution and violence. Only Türkiye recognizes the Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence in the island’s northern third, where it maintains more than 35,000 troops.

The division has been a source of tensions since then, including over who holds sway on the island's offshore exclusive economic zone, more than 40% of which was claimed by Türkiye following recent natural gas discoveries. Türkiye doesn’t recognize the Greek Cypriot administration as a state.

Christodoulides has been pushing to restart talks with Tatar, including a proposal to get the European Union more invested in the U.N.-facilitated negotiations and appointing a senior official to help guide the process. Turkish Cyprus strongly opposes the idea because of the EU’s "pro-Greek attitude" regarding the crisis and how it has "blocked an acceptable agreement and perpetuated the status quo."

The Greek Cypriot administration joined the EU in 2004, but only the Greek Cypriot south, where the internationally recognized government is seated, enjoys its full benefits.

Tatar said talks could begin once the Greek Cypriot administration recognizes the sovereign equality of Turkish Cyprus.