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NICOSIA (AFP)

UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned Cypriot leaders on Wednesday that time was running out for a peace deal as they held their first talks since a hardliner won power in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.

Ban’s message to the two sides was read out by UN envoy Alexander Downer as Turkish Cypriot nationalist leader Dervis Eroglu held his first formal negotiating session with Cyprus President Demetris Christofias since his poll victory over pro-solution incumbent Mehmet Ali Talat on April 18.

“The peace process is at an important point. A settlement is within your grasp and this opportunity must be seized as time is not on your side,” the message said.

“Achieving an agreement will require vision, statesmanship and courage. Your communities want and expect a settlement,” the UN chief added.

“I truly believe that you can reach an agreement in the coming months.”

The UN-sponsored talks aimed at ending the eastern Mediterranean island’s decades-old division were suspended in late March to allow campaigning for the Turkish Cypriot election.

The first formal negotiating session between Eroglu and his Greek Cypriot opposite number was seen as a key test of whether the two men could find the right chemistry to do business.

In order to break the ice, the United Nations arranged a social dinner for the pair and their wives on Tuesday evening at a restaurant in the UN-patrolled buffer zone that divides the capital Nicosia.

“Things will be judged at the negotiating table and not over the dinner tables,” Christofias said afterwards.

It was reminiscent of the dinner diplomacy that helped build trust during a 2001 deadlock in a previous round of ultimately abortive reunification talks.

Greek Cypriots fear Eroglu’s separatist views could derail the latest talks which began in September 2008.

But the United Nations said that negotiations would pick up from where they left off on March 30 and that Eroglu was committed to the ongoing process.

The UN envoy has said that Eroglu accepted that negotiations would not start from scratch and that a settlement would entail a federal reunited Cyprus with a single international character.

“There is no doubt that a Cyprus solution is doable,” Downer told reporters on Tuesday.

“But to achieve an agreement will require a great deal of political strength, courage and will from both sides, a determination to make sure that they are able to strike an agreement.”

Downer said Eroglu had also pledged not to reopen chapters where there had been significant convergence such as governance, power sharing, EU affairs and the economy. The trickiest issues ahead will be property rights, territorial adjustments and security.

Wednesday’s meeting focused on the divisive property issue after the leaders confirmed the convergences made in the past.

Negotiations will resume on the property chapter on June 3.

The latest round of reunification talks was launched amid much international optimism that a settlement could be achieved.

But in more than 70 meetings, Christofias and Talat made sluggish progress despite the much vaunted personal and ideological chemistry between the two leftist leaders.

The last push for a settlement collapsed in 2004 when Greek Cypriots voted down a UN-drafted reunification plan, even though the Turkish Cypriots gave it overwhelming support.

Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkish troops seized the north in response to an Athens-backed Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.

The breakaway Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, which Turkish Cyriot leaders declared in 1983, is recognised only by Ankara.