Athens - Greece on Tuesday said the two divided ethnic communities on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus must implement confidence-building measures in a bid to restart stalled reunification talks. "There is only one road for a solution: In order for negotiations to proceed the decision of July 2006 must first be implemented," Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos said following talks with Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.
International efforts to reunify the island have been stalled since the failure of a UN peace plan in 2004.
Both Papadopoulos and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat agreed on July 8, 2006 to start two-way negotiations but aside from a rare face to face encounter in September, the two sides have remained miles apart on how to proceed on rekindling reunification talks.
"Confidence-building measures must be implemented by both sides," Karamanlis told journalists.
The agreement reached last July aimed to renew contacts between Greek and Turkish Cypriots by having technical committees tackle everyday concerns and working groups dealing with substantive issues, but there has been little progress.
Talat has accused the Cypriot leader of trying to put off serious talks indefinitely, saying that the Greek Cypriots had no incentive for real peace since they joined the European Union in May 2004 and the euro zone in January 2007.
Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos arrived in Athens on Monday for the start of a four-day working visit that is to include a tour of the western Peloponnese, where Cyprus has promised reconstruction aid following devastating forest fires this summer.
On Wednesday, Papadopoulos is to travel to the village of Artemida and hold talks with officials in the western Peloponnese, where dozens of people were killed after forest fires hit the region.
His government has promised to rebuild dozens of homes and replant thousands of olive trees that were destroyed by the deadly fires.
