UN Secretary-General Mr Kofi Annan said today that all sides in the Cyprus dispute appeared ready to resume negotiations on a plan for reuniting the divided Mediterranean island.
Mr Annan, in Washington for talks with President George W. Bush, said he had asked Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos and Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou about a resumption of the UN-backed talks to reunite Cyprus ahead of its accession to the European Union on May 1st.
However, Mr Annan said he had not yet spoken to the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Rauf Denktash, "but everyone seems ready to resume and I hope to be able to invite them to a meeting shortly," he told reporters at the White House.
"President Bush supports my efforts and would like to see the talks resume, and supports the plan we've put on the table and urges the parties to press ahead and negotiate and find a settlement on the basis of that," Mr Annan said.
Cyprus has been split along Greek-Turkish ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded the north of the island after a brief Greek Cypriot coup backed by the military then ruling Greece.