Half of Greek Cypriots would vote down UN peace plan

ONE-IN-TWO Greek Cypriots would vote down a UN peace plan for the island in a referendum and 48% think their leaders were wrong to agree even to talk about it, an opinion poll published yesterday suggested.

Only a quarter of respondents said they would vote for the UN blueprint if it were presented to them unaltered in an island-wide vote provisionally scheduled for March, the poll published in the centre-right Alithia newspaper found.

But a full 25% said they remained undecided about the plan delivered to their leaders early last week, with only 26% saying they knew enough about it.

And just 30% of those polled said they thought the UN blueprint was the best settlement the Greek Cypriot community could achieve.

The poll's findings are bad news for the UN as it seeks a settlement ending Cyprus's 28-year division in time for a key European Union summit in Copenhagen next month. The summit is to rule on the island's EU membership ambitions as well as those of Turkey, which maintains 35,000 troops in the north.

UN envoy Alvaro de Soto reiterated Monday that the December 12 deadline was an "essential, integral and inseparable" part of the UN plan, as he received Greek Cypriot leader Glafcos Clerides's agreement to negotiate on the basis of the blueprint.

Turkish Cypriots have yet to give their response, although de Soto said he hoped to receive it soon. Their leader, Rauf Denktash, is in a New York hospital recovering from complications from heart surgery last month.

The UN plan foresees Cyprus's reunification as a Swiss-style confederation, of two equal “component states” within the European Union.

It requires that Turkish Cypriots hand back some territory they currently control.

It also requires that Greek Cypriots accept some of those displaced by Turkey's 1974 invasion of the island's northern third will not be able to return to their homes.

The poll was conducted by telephone on a sample of 501 people between November 14 and 17. The paper said that the proportion of respondents opposing the UN blueprint rose over the four days of the poll.