Greek and Turkish Cypriot Leaders Agree on End to Split

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 13 — Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders today accepted Secretary General Kofi Annan's plan for ending Cyprus's decades of division and pledged to negotiate reunification in time for the island's May 1 entry into the European Union.

The deal between the Greek Cypriot president, Tassos Papadopoulos, and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart, Rauf Denktash, was struck after three days of talks at the United Nations, including a marathon 12-hour session that ended at 3 a.m. today.

It brought forth expressions of hope that a solution to one of the world's most persistent conflicts was at hand. "I really believe that after 40 years, a political settlement is at last in reach," Mr. Annan said in announcing the deal.

He had invested substantial personal capital in breaking the longtime stalemate on the Mediterranean island, and the arrangement makes him the final binding arbiter of any last-minute disagreements on what is known as "the Annan plan."

The United States special coordinator for Cyprus since 1999, Thomas G. Weston, said, "It is almost certain now that there will be a settlement on the island of Cyprus."

Interviewed after meeting with Mr. Annan, Mr. Weston said: "There have been numerous attempts in the past and they all led to failure until today. Now we have the procedure and methodology which has given us exceptionally strong prospects to reach agreement before Cyprus enters the European Union."

According to today's understanding, the two sides will reconvene on Thursday in Cyprus under a tight timetable calling for them to agree by March 22 on reunification language that can be put to simultaneous islandwide referenda in April.

Technical committees will start work next week on ironing out details on laws and treaties, and the United Nations will chair a separate committee on the financial and economic aspects of reunification.

If the two parties are unable to reach agreement themselves, the pact calls for Turkey and Greece to enter the conversations, and if differences still persist by March 29, Mr. Annan will have the power "to fill in the blanks," according to United Nations diplomats. The intended referenda date is April 21.

"Very much as a last resort, the secretary general, with reluctance, will have the last word," explained Alvaro de Soto, the Peruvian diplomat who is Mr. Annan's special adviser on Cyprus and who will be leading next week's talks. He said he believed the parties had the will and resources to complete the settlement themselves, and he "devoutly" hoped Mr. Annan's intervention would not be necessary.

Unless reunification is achieved, only the Greek Cypriot government will be entitled to enter the soon-to-be 25-nation European Union on May 1. That reality had focused negotiators, with Turkey in particular lending strong backing to the last-ditch effort out of the knowledge that failure in Cyprus would jeopardize its own active candidacy to become the first Muslim nation to join the European Union.

Hostilities between Cyprus's Greek and Turkish communities have required United Nations peacekeepers on the island since 1964 and led to formal division in 1974, when Turkey seized the northern third in response to a pro-Greek coup seeking to unify Cyprus with Greece. In 1983, the breakaway state became the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized internationally only by Turkey, which keeps 30,000 troops there.

An intensive round of reunification talks under Mr. Annan last year produced a United Nations blueprint for a single state with Greek- and Turkish- Cypriot-federated regions, but it collapsed in April when Mr. Denktash refused to put it to a vote of his people and balked at the naming of Mr. Annan as a final arbiter.

Mr. Annan invited the two sides to New York last week to make a last try before the pending European Union entry, and he received strong outside backing from the United States, a supporter of Turkey's European aspirations, and the three so-called guarantor nations, Greece, Turkey and Britain.

"The agreement is the result of cooperative efforts among the parties, particularly Greece and Turkey, who have not always exercised such cooperative efforts in the past," Mr. Weston said. He confirmed reports that the United States secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, had been in direct contact with the principal parties in recent days as the talks appeared to falter.

Mr. Denktash, blamed for obstructionism in the past, surprised the negotiators by dropping his objection to Mr. Annan's role as final judge and by saying that his main demand was more active involvement in the later stages on the part of Turkey and Greece. "We were impressed this time that there was a different mindset," Mr. De Soto said.

But Mr. Papadopoulos came back with a demand that the European Union itself become an active player in the talks, a request that was dismissed as meddlesome by the Turkish side.

Athens, Ankara, London and Washington engaged in busy overnight diplomacy, and European Union officials in Brussels said today that they had no interest in becoming directly involved, thus taking the air out of the Greek Cypriot proposal.

The statement read by Mr. Annan today promised only "assurances of the European Union to accommodate a settlement and the offer of technical assistance by the European Commission."