Europe

Europe

Security Council extends UN peacekeeping mandate in Cyprus

14 December 2011 21:07 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. The UN Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted a resolution to extend the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus for six more months, strongly encouraging ethnic Greeks and Turks to move towards a more "intensive" stage of negotiations that would speed up negotiations and ideally set the stage for an exit strategy for the mandate, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Officially known as the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus ( UNIFCYP), the mandate is one of the UN’s longest standing peacekeeping forces. It was originally authorized by the Security Council in 1964 to quell tensions between the Turkish and Greek Cypriots.

With an annual budget of 58 million U.S. dollars, the mandate employs 856 military personnel, 66 police, 41 international civilian personnel and 112 local civilian staff, the resolution said.

The new resolution also called the current state of negotiations "unsustainable," and "strongly urged the leaders to increase the momentum in the negotiations, particularly on the core issues, to reach an enduring, comprehensive and just settlement based on a bicommunal, bizonal federation with political equality."

The resolution called on leaders to "improve the public atmosphere in which the negotiations are proceeding" and "increase the participation of civil society in the process as appropriate."

Cyprus has been divided by a militarized buffer zone since 1974, when the Turkish military intervened and occupied the northern tip of the island, following a coup by a group of Greek officers.

A meeting between Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias, Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is scheduled for January.

The three leaders are expected to resolve all "internal aspects of a settlement" before moving to a "multilateral conference shortly thereafter," said the resolution.

There are, by most accounts, four issues that still divide the sides: Governance and power sharing, particularly in the case of the presidency, property, territory and citizenship.

The leaders have been meeting once a week since mid-November, according to the head of UNIFCYP, Lisa Buttenheim.