Rival Cypriot leaders met yesterday for the formal launch of intensive UN-backed negotiations to reunify the divided Mediterranean island after three decades of failed diplomacy.
Both seen as pro-settlement moderates, President Demetris Christofias, a Greek Cypriot, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, have met five times this year in a renewed push for unity.
“Today is an historic day for Cyprus,” said UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy, former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer, who was at the launch of the talks in the UN-patrolled buffer zone of Nicosia.
PHOTO: AP
Downer said “significant progress” had been made to build confidence and create a solid foundation for the negotiations, which mark the first major push for peace on the island since a failed UN peace plan in 2004.
“There have been difficult moments over the past months and there will likely be further difficulties and challenges ahead. At the same time, the Cyprus problem is not insurmountable and the negotiations which begin today can and must have a successful outcome,” he said.
The negotiation process has an open-ended timeline but the UN has warned that the talks can not go on indefinitely without tangible progress.
The buildup to the talks has been clouded by the refusal of Turkish Cypriot authorities to allow Greek Cypriot pilgrims to travel via a town in the northwest of the island to attend a church service.
However, hundreds of Turkish- and Greek-Cypriot peace activists rallied on Monday night in the capital’s buffer zone chanting for a reunified Cyprus.
Talat, meanwhile, has raised the possibility of a settlement by the end of this year.
“It depends on the Greek-Cypriot side, if they have the will I am sure we can find a solution by the end of the year,” he said on Monday.
He insisted that any deal would have to provide for two politically equal “constituent states,” a concept which has been anathema to the Greek-Cypriot community which makes up more than 80 percent of the island’s population.
Preparatory talks at committee level since March have been accompanied by confidence-building measures, notably the opening of a crossing in Ledra Street linking south and north in the symbolic heart of old Nicosia.
It is the first intensive push for peace since a UN reunification plan was approved by Turkish Cypriots but overwhelmingly rejected by Greek Cypriots, just a week before the island joined the EU in 2004.
Optimists are pinning their hopes on the personal chemistry and shared left-wing politics of the two leaders.
Christofias was elected in February on a platform of relaunching peace efforts. Talat led the Turkish Cypriot “yes” vote in 2004.
Any agreement the leaders reach will then have to be sold to the two communities in simultaneous referendums.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when tens of thousands of Turkish troops occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup seeking union with Greece.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including