Rival Cypriot Leaders Upbeat As They Start Reunification Talks

Two men believed to hold the key to peace on Cyprus yesterday launched long-awaited reunification talks, a historic turning point for a country divided by war for the past 34 years. Meeting in the UN-patrolled "dead zone" that divides the capital, Nicosia, the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders, Demetris Christofias and Mehmet Ali Talat, offered the best hope yet of a breakthrough, saying they aimed to reach a settlement "as soon as possible".

"There is a common will, a common desire," said Christofias, whose election last February as Cyprus's sixth president injected new momentum into the quest to end the island's division.

"The time has come for us to take joint action and to respond to the call of history - to give to future generations the opportunity to live in a peaceful and reunified homeland." It was, he told reporters, his "life target" to put the island back together again in a "bizonal, bicommunal federation".

Cyprus has been split since 1974 when Turkey, in response to an Athens-inspired coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece, sent in troops and seized its northern third. Turkish Cypriots proclaimed independence in 1983, although their impoverished breakaway republic is recognized only by Turkey.

The talks end deadlock of more than four years after Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected what was widely seen as the most sophisticated UN peace plan ever for the island. Turkish Cypriots supported the blueprint.

The current negotiations, which cover such thorny issues as power-sharing, security and the presence of an estimated 40,000 Turkish troops on the island, will be open-ended. When concluded, the agreement will be put to both communities in separate simultaneous referendums.

Lauded by peace activists across the ethnic divide, the intensive peace process is widely seen as the best, and perhaps last, chance of reassembling the EU's only partitioned state.

"Time is not on the side of a settlement," said Talat, president of the Turkish sector, reiterating that he hoped to map out a solution by the end of the year. "We, as the two leaders, have a historic responsibility to find an early settlement to this protracted problem. Our island has been identified with problems and conflicts for far too long."

As Turkey's own EU membership ambitions rest on the progress made, analysts say much will depend on Ankara's goodwill.

Both leaders, who are leftwingers bonded by a similar world view, have raised international hopes that they will be able to succeed where mediators and diplomats have for decades failed.

"It is widely believed that if these two moderates can't solve it, nobody can," said Hubert Faustmann, a Cyprus-based analyst.

The good chemistry between the two leaders, in evidence since Christofias' communist Akel party won power on a pledge to reunite the island, was firmly on display yesterday as they both greeted the assembled crowd in Greek, Turkish and English.

The optimism has been reinforced by a series of confidence-building measures, ranging from common road safety projects to shared promotion of the island's cultural heritage, that aim to further "normalize" life between its majority-Greek and Turkish populations. The steps follow a ground-breaking decision to open up Ledra Street, the truncated boulevard in the heart of Nicosia that most represented the island's bitter divisions.

"The Cyprus problem is not insurmountable and the negotiations which you begin today can, and must, have a successful outcome," said Australia's former foreign minister, Alexander Downer, who was recently appointed as the UN's special envoy to the island, in a sign of the renewed hopes for the future.