Over the weekend, the United States Vice President, Joe Biden spoke to both Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci via a phone call ahead of a planned visit to Turkey for later this week.
During the phone call Biden spoke encouragingly about the two sides and their quest to continue talks to find a solution to the Cyprus issue.
The White House issued a statement where they said that Biden “congratulated the leaders on the progress they have made so far in the negotiations toward a settlement that would reunify Cyprus as a bizonal, bicommunal federation,” and he “expressed hope that the leaders would be able to make significant additional progress in the talks before they travel to the United Nations General Assembly, and that an agreement could be reached by the end of 2016.”
The island of Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when the Turkish military illegally occupied the northern third of the island. Until today there are still some 43,000 troops stationed in the occupied third and there are still over 1,000 Greek-Cypriots who went missing during the invasion and have never been found, according to official reports.
Over the past couple of years, UN-led talks to reunify the island have seen some promising progress, according to Greek and Turkish Cypriot officials, the talks to resolve the Cyprus issue are ongoing.
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