Roundup: Cyprus's community leaders head for most crucial negotiations

The leaders of the Greek and Turkish communities of Cyprus traveled to Switzerland on Sunday ahead of a new round of intensive negotiations in their search for a deal reunifying their partitioned island.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, representing the Greek Cypriot community, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci are scheduled to start a week-long phase of UN-led talks on Monday.

An agreement will set the stage for the final phase of the peace efforts, a multi-party conference to decide security arrangements.

Turkish troops occupied 37.5 percent of Cyprus's territory in a 1974 military operation, in reaction to a coup engineered by the military rulers of Greece at the time.

In 2004, the UN prepared a blueprint for a Cyprus solution, which came to be known as the Annan Plan that proposed the return of 8.5 percentage points of territory under Greek Cypriot control. But the plan was rejected by the Greek Cypriots.

Anastasiades has given notice that at the negotiations in Switzerland, he will demand a bigger portion of territory under Greek Cypriot control.

"The area to be returned must be such that the majority of displaced people, about 100,000 of them, will return to their homes under Greek Cypriot administration," Anastasiades said in a televised address on Friday aimed at briefing the people on the state of affairs at the negotiations.

That would mean that Turkish Cypriots would retain control on an area closer to their population ratio, which was agreed to be fixed at 22 percent of the population, as against 18 percent in 1974.

On his part, Akinci has been insisting that Turkish Cypriots and settlers who were allocated Greek Cypriot properties over the last four decades must not be relocated.

A first step in the negotiations will be to agree on the criteria for the territorial adjustments.

Anastasiades said he will not consent to a multi-party conference being convened without an agreement on the criteria for territorial adjustments and also maps showing the exact areas under the control of each side.

Ahead of leaving for Switzerland, both Anastasiades and Akinci vowed that they are determined to work hard to solve remaining differences so as to make a solution agreement possible within 2016.

But they also left room for the possibility of failing to bridge divergences to an extent allowing passage to the last stage of the effort. Endit