NICOSIA, May 27 (Xinhua) -- Nicos Anastasiades, president of Cyprus, has sent a letter to Ersin Tatar, the leader of the Turkish Cypriot community, aiming to restart negotiations for a Cyprus peace solution, Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said on Friday.
In an interview to state-run Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation, he confirmed that the letter contained proposals for a series of confidence building measures.
These include commitments relating to the autonomy of the two constituent states to be set up by the Cypriot communities in a federal state.
The discussions should take place based on the United Nations resolutions on Cyprus and the 2014 agreement between President Anastasiades and former Turkish Cypriot community leader Dervis Eroglu, Kasoulides said.
Negotiations for a Cyprus peace solution reached a deadlock in July 2017, during a United Nations (UN) sponsored international conference in Switzerland. They were based on a UN Security Council blueprint for a re-unified Cyprus under a federal umbrella in which Greek and Turkish Cypriots would share power.
Since then, Turkey and a new Turkish Cypriot leadership have declined to resume negotiations on this basis and demanded a permanent partition of Cyprus and the establishment of two separate Cypriot states.
This demand, however, has been rejected by the United Nations and the UN Security Council.
Cyprus was partitioned when Turkey sent troops to intervene in the northern part of Cyprus in 1974, in response to a coup by the military rulers of Greece at the time. ■