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| - The UN chief was "realistic" as rival Cypriot leaders and their backers were set Tuesday to begin informal talks in Geneva, his spokesman said, four years after their last peace talks failed. The United Nations is trying to mediate a deal for the divided island, almost six decades since it first deployed peacekeepers. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has travelled to Geneva to oversee the three days of talks in various formats. "The secretary-general is realistic," his spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in Geneva. "This is an issue that he knows well. He has participated in discussions before. So he is realistic." The spokesman stressed that the talks were "informal" and were meant "to determine whether a common ground exists for the parties to negotiate a lasting solution to the Cyprus issue within a foreseeable horizon." The two Cypriot delegations taking part will be headed by Nicos Anastasiades, head of the Greek Cypriot-run Republic of Cyprus and his counterpart in the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), Ersin Tatar. Turkey has also been invited to the latest talks, along with Greece and Britain -- the three guarantors of the island's 1960 independence. Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkey occupied the northern third in response to a coup orchestrated by an Athens-backed junta seeking to annex the island to Greece. The Turkish-occupied zone later declared independence, but remains heavily dependent on Ankara. A UN-controlled buffer zone separates the breakaway state from areas controlled by EU member the Republic of Cyprus. Negotiations for a solution have repeatedly failed, with the last round stalling in 2017. Those talks, held in Switzerland, had aimed to secure reunification in a federation. But they floundered over the withdrawal of tens of thousands of Turkish troops and over Ankara's status as a guarantor power. And since then, several factors have added to the traditional sticking points over security guarantees, political equality, territorial adjustments and refugees' property rights. Obstacles to the process include rising tensions in the eastern Mediterranean over conflicting claims to offshore oil and gas involving Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. Speaking in a plane en route to Geneva on Tuesday, Anastasiades said this week's talks were "crucial". He said his delegation was going in with "determination and political will", and was eager to find a way to "restart substantive negotiations." "I hope the other side will come with the same will and the same evaluation, because any diversion will not only be at the expense of the Greek Cypriots, but also to the detriment of the Turkish Cypriots," he said. But after decades of negotiations based on the idea of reunifying the island through the creation of a federal state, the TRNC is now advocating for that approach to be abandoned in favour of a two-state solution. On Saturday, Tatar, a hardliner and protege of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan elected in October, urged the international community to "acknowledge the existence" of two states in Cyprus. "We are going to Geneva with a new vision for Cyprus, one based on the realities on the island," he said in a statement. "There are two peoples with distinct national identities, running their own affairs separately." That diverts from the UN mandate of delivering a federal solution for a reunited Cyprus. bur-nl/rjm/yad
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