CYPRUS: The battle for Greek and Turkish Cypriot hearts and minds opened on the eve of today's UN-brokered talks aimed at reunifying Cyprus before the island joins the European Union on May 1st.
The US envoy, Mr Thomas Weston, called on the two communities not to reject the UN plan for a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation if their leaders agreed to it and put it to separate referenda on April 21st.
Mr Weston urged Cypriots to read the document and become "fully aware of its provisions". The plan could be the last chance for reunifying Cyprus, divided since Turkey occupied the north in 1974.
Mr Sener Levent, editor of a Turkish Cypriot newspaper, warned Greek Cypriots not to vote against the plan, put forward by the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, in 2002. Mr Levent, a prospective MEP for Cyprus, said that a No vote would "fall into a Turkish trap" because Ankara prefers Greek Cypriot rejection to a solution.
He said a Greek Cypriot No and a Turkish Cypriot Yes would cement division, grant legitimacy to the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state and eliminate the "bad boy" image of Turkey. The outgoing Greek Foreign Minister and head of the socialist Pasok party, Mr George Papandreou, addressed an unprecedented meeting of representatives of 57 Turkish Cypriot associations and parties, calling upon them not to waste the opportunity to resolve the Cyprus problem.
The gathering took place at the old Ledra Palace Hotel, once Nicosia's finest, now a barracks for UN peacekeepers in the buffer zone at the main crossing between the two halves of Nicosia, the world's last formally divided capital.
At the end of the event, Greek and Turkish Cypriots shook hands, parted and walked through the drizzle to their respective checkpoints, encountering weary Turkish Cypriot construction workers returning home after a day's labour in the Greek Cypriot south. Although the line has blurred since the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Rauf Denktash, opened the gates last April, separatism still rules.
Greek and Turkish Cypriots meet and mix but sleep in their ethnic zones. The Green Line, made manifest by mine fields, barbed wire fences, ramshackle walls and UN observation towers, cuts across the country and bisects the capital.
Nicosia's UN-patrolled buffer zone is a dead area of overgrown streets and crumbling homes, looted shops and workshops and a cafe where tables set with mouldy plates and empty beer bottles which were abruptly abandoned in 1974. The internationally recognised republic is thriving, an outpost of Europe in the Levant, while the self-declared Turkish Cypriot state is an isolated provincial backwater reliant on mainland Turkey for budgetary support and a captive market for Turkish goods. When they want to buy German soap powder and English cheddar or have a burger at McDonald's, Turkish Cypriots cross the line.
While the 2,000 strong Greek army contingent keeps a low profile in the republic, Turkey's 40,000 troops based in white washed compounds in the north are omnipresent.
Over the past 30 years Mr Denktash, with Ankara's backing, has reigned over the Turkish Cypriot area.