Cyprus talks open despite bomb attack

Talks aimed at reunifying Cyprus began today with the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot leaders sitting down with the UN mediator in Nicosia.

Hours earlier a bomb had exploded outside the house of the Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Talat, causing damage but no injuries.

UN envoy Alvaro de Soto greeted chief Turkish Cypriot negotiator Rauf Denktash and his Greek Cypriot counterpart, President Tassos Papadopoulos, as they arrived at the United Nations conference centre in the abandoned Nicosia airport in the buffer zone that divides Cyprus.

UN police from Australia and Ireland patrolled outside the airport, where a bullet-marked buildings and a bombed-out passenger jet from the 1974 fighting are still on view. Cyprus has been divided since the Turkish army invaded after supporters of union of Greece staged a coup.

Talat dismissed the overnight blast at his house as a “futile effort to scare us,” Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported.

“There is no return from this road,” Talat said. “In this process, there may be some people who are disturbed by the two communities coming closer, but such acts will not make us return from this path.”

Talat said the blast broke his front door and shattered windows in his home as well as at his neighbours’ houses.

There have been fears in Cyprus that extremists could use violence to try and disrupt the talks.

For decades, negotiations have failed, but the two sides now face a firm deadline. Cyprus enters the European Union on May 1 as a united country or as a divided land with UN peacekeepers patrolling in its capital.

The United States and the EU are closely watching the talks and are putting pressure on Turkey and Greece to press for a settlement before Cyprus’ entry into the EU.

For Turkey, Cyprus’ entry as a split country could be a disaster for its own EU bid. Turkey has 40,000 troops on the north of the island and EU leaders have made it clear that those soldiers could be considered as occupying EU territory after May 1.

The last round of talks collapsed in April, amid Denktash’s objections. Denktash has long said that uniting the Turkish Cypriot north with the Greek Cypriot south would lead to Greek Cypriot domination.

The south, with a population of 600,000, has three times as many people as the north and about five times the per capita income.

The new talks will face a strict timetable devised by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The leaders have five weeks to work out an agreement using a plan written by Annan as their basis.

If they fail, Greece and Turkish leaders will enter the talks. And if that fails, Annan has the right to fill in the blanks and put the agreement to a referendum on each side of the island on April 21.

The plan calls for a single state with Greek and Turkish Cypriot federal regions linked through a weak central government.

But many details of the plan, such as how many Turkish troops would remain on the island and how many refugees could return to their homes, are sharply contested.