Cyprus peace talks ‘collective failure’: UN Envoy

UNITED NATIONS The UN will always be available if leaders decide to make an effort to resolve the dispute, the organizations Cyprus Envoy said Tuesday. “Not the time to engage in a blame game. There is more than enough of that going around,” Espen Barth Eide, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Cyprus, told members of the Security Council. “We have to admit that there was a collective failure at stitching together a deal in Crans-Montana”, he added. The Swiss talks to reunify the island of Cyprus recently ended in failure. Representatives from the EU, the Turkish and Greek Cypriot leaderships, and the guarantor nations of Turkey, Greece and the U.K., participated in the discussions that began at the end of last month to resolve the dispute. The UN sought a peace deal to unite Cyprus under a federal umbrella that could also define the future of Europe's relations with Turkey, a key player in the conflict. The Eastern Mediterranean island has been divided since 1974, when a Greek Cypriot coup was followed by violence against the island's Turks, and Ankara's intervention as a guarantor power.