November 9, 2002
The United Nations is expected to put forward a Cyprus peace plan in the next few days that seeks to resolve in 30 days a conflict that has defied settlement for 30 years, diplomatic officials said today.
In the most comprehensive peace proposal for the island in more than 10 years, United Nations officials are to submit, probably by Monday, a blueprint they hope Greeks and Turks will accept before the European Union invites Cyprus to join it at a December summit meeting.
The 150-page document is expected to be submitted both to officials in Nicosia and to officials at the United Nations headquarters in New York, said diplomatic officials close to the peace negotiations.
The plan was drawn up by a team working under a United Nations envoy, í?lvaro de Soto, with help from the United States and Britain, the former colonial power in Cyprus. Mediators hoped for at least the outline of a peace agreement in place by the European Union's summit meeting in Copenhagen on Dec. 12. Mediators had been awaiting the outcome of the Turkish elections before proceeding, officials said.
The conflict over Cyprus has pitted two NATO allies, Turkey and Greece, against each other for years.
Cyprus, the strategically vital eastern Mediterranean island, has been divided since 1974, when Turkish forces invaded its northern third. They were responding to a brief Greek Cypriot coup engineered by the military then ruling Greece.
Turkish Cypriots, who run a breakaway state in northern Cyprus recognized only by Turkey, control 36 percent of the island and almost 59 percent of its coastline.
Peace talks between President Glafcos Clerides, the Greek Cypriot leader, and Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot leader, have hobbled along with no clear result since early January.
Those talks are now effectively on hold as Mr. Denktash recovers from open heart surgery in New York, but the two leaders are expected to negotiate the new plan. The Greek Cypriots want a two-zone federation linked by a central government; the Turkish Cypriots seek a confederation of two largely independent states.
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