Nicosia ‘dead zone’ - Hubris a threat to NI’s stability

NICOSIA is Europe’s last divided capital. For more than four decades UN peacekeepers have patrolled a dead zone — others call it a green zone — but whatever it is called it bisects the Cypriot capital and stands as a monument to the hatreds dividing the island’s Greek-Orthodox Christian majority and minority Muslim Turks.

The strip stretches 180km across the island and represents the kind of division anyone familiar with Irish history will recognise.

The dead zone was established in 1974, formalising a no-man’s land between ceasefire lines delineated by little more than what two opposing armies agreed were their last defensive positions during that island’s bitter war.

Discussions in Geneva culminated yesterday in a historic summit between Greece, Turkey, and Britain — Cyprus’s post-colonial guarantor powers.

The dead zone dominated that agenda as, for the first time, the island has leaders determined to end division.

They have agreed, for the first time, to consider the territorial concessions needed to build a lasting peace.

In 1974 the 1,000th victim of the North’s Troubles — petrol station owner James Murphy from Fermanagh — was murdered. Yet, 43 years later, events this week suggest that the embers of that conflict remain potent.

Will the leaders of Stormont’s divided parties ever find the grace and the magnanimity needed to make our dead zone obsolete?