2008-07-24 14:02:04 -
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) - The leaders of Cyprus' rival Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities meet Friday to decide if conditions are right for them to embark on historic talks to reunify the ethnically divided island.
Cyprus President Dimitris Christofias, a Greek Cypriot, has been evasive about giving a starting date, insisting that it would depend
on Friday's review of progress in the preliminary phase of a revived peace process.
But the leader of the breakaway Turkish Cypriots, Mehmet Ali Talat, on Wednesday signaled on CNN-Turk television that a September start to the full-fledged negotiations was likely.
The start of such top-level talks would end a five-month preparation period during which groups of experts from both sides tried to narrow the gap between the two communities on a range of issues, including contentious property and security arrangements.
More importantly, the talks would spell the end of a four-year deadlock ushered in by a Greek Cypriot rejection of a U.N. reunification blueprint _ the culmination of years of negotiation. Turkish Cypriots accepted the plan.
Cyprus was divided into a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and an internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot south in 1974 when Turkey invaded in response to a short-lived coup by supporters of uniting the island with Greece.
The two leaders must deal with a legacy of repeated failures during 34 years to negotiate deal. But the two appear determined not to let this chance slip away.
Christofias swept into power in February, ousting the hardline incumbent on a pro-reunification ticket and immediately sought to restart moribund talks with Talat.
The two leaders agreed in March to revive the peace process.
To underscore their mutual commitment to peace, they opened a north-south crossing point in the heart of the divided capital that had come to embody both the intractability of the problem and the elusiveness of its resolution.
«Considering that the current pair of leaders have staked so much on negotiating a settlement, the entire notion of resolving the Cyprus problem bilaterally will have been dealt a blow if they fail in this round,» said Eastern Mediterranean University international relations professor Erol Kaymak.
Publicly, the two leaders have agreed on forging a federal state composed of two «constituent states» guaranteeing the political equality of both communities. But differences remain over what «federation» precisely means for either side.
Talat's repeated references to two «equal founding states» point to a looser, confederation-type partnership. Underpinning this is a Turkish Cypriot determination never to be dominated by the Greek Cypriots, who outnumber them roughly four to one.
Christofias favors a more cohesive federal model with a stronger central government to which the two partner states would remain subordinate. This would address a Greek Cypriot fear of a deal potentially unraveling into formal partition.
