Cyprus election raising hopes of peace deal

Hardline Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos’ electoral defeat raised prospects on Monday of an end to a schism with ethnic Turks that has at times brought NATO partners Greece and Turkey to the brink of war.

Papadopoulos, 74, was unexpectedly voted out in a first round of polling on Sunday, opening the Feb. 24 runoff to two candidates seeking swift resumption of reunification talks — a move that could help European Union aspirant Turkey‘s relations with Brussels.

“A historic era has officially ended… with Papadopoulos the last of the Mohicans,” wrote the Simerini newspaper in a front-page editorial.

Politis newspaper similarly resorted to imagery, taking its cue from cartoons. Ioannis Kassoulides and Demetris Christofias were portrayed as road runners, with Papadopoulos as Wile E Coyote slamming into a rock.

Relations between Greece and Turkey have eased in the last decade, but Cyprus remains a raw wound for Greece and Turkey as well as EU member Cyprus itself. Nicosia, recognised by the EU as sole sovereign power over the island, is unlikely to promote Turkish membership talks without reunification in some form.

Sunday’s election results could help end current stalemate.

Both right-winger Kassoulides, 59, and communist party leader Christofias, 62, pledge a more conciliatory approach towards Turkish Cypriots in the northern third of the east Mediterranean island and have said they will pursue meetings with its leadership if elected.

The last peace effort collapsed in 2004 when Papadopoulos, elected a year earlier, led the Greek Cypriot rejection of a United Nations blueprint for reunification. Christofias and the communist coalition partner AKEL had rejected the plan then, and Kassoulides’ Democratic Rally party had supported it.

 

WOOING PAPADOPOULOS

 

Both sides sought the backing of Papadopoulos’s supporters to seal victory.

Kassoulides and Christofias were scheduled to have meetings with Papadopoulos’s key backers, the Democratic Party, on Monday. Senior party members would meet on Tuesday.

There was no indication on how Papadopoulos would swing. One newspaper reported Monday that Kassoulides had held out an olive branch to the Papadopoulos camp, offering EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou the post of Cypriot foreign minister.

Papadopoulos was elected in 2003 with support from Christofias, but his party had also supported right-wingers in past elections.

“There was a vote for candidates more proactive about a solution,” a western diplomat in Nicosia told Reuters. “I would assume that the United Nations would see this as a positive sign, that there is the wish and the will there for a solution.”

Mediators are expected to take the pulse for the resumption of talks this year, a possibility which could bode well for Turkey, which has its EU bid assessed in 2009.

Its EU membership talks were partially suspended in 2006 over its refusal to open its ports and airports to Greek Cypriot traffic.  (Reuters)