"Successful" Cyprus conference to continue, no deal yet: UN official

The UN Special Adviser on Cyprus said Friday that though sticking points including the issue of safety and guarantees remain, Cyprus talks have yielded much progress, with preparatory technical discussions set to take place next week.

"There are difficult issues to overcome, but there is a will to overcome them," Espen Barth Eide told reporters here on the second day of an international conference on Cyprus.

"The next event in this conference is a meeting that will take place on Wednesday where senior civil servants will come together from the parties... to prepare the ground for a structured final discussion between the principles at the very high political level," he added.

Though no date was given by the diplomat, Eide said that these final negotiations would take place "soon... maybe even in the course of this month."

An international conference on Cyprus kicked off on Thursday following three days of talks between Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci at Geneva's UN headquarters.

Involving the foreign ministers of the three guarantor powers (Turkey, Greece and Britain), the conference is seen as an historic opportunity to broker a deal which could end decades of division.

Though much progress seems to have been made over the course of the week, a number of gaps remain to be bridged between rival delegations.

"It's important to understand that Cyprus talks in general have six chapters, five of them pertain to the Cypriotes only and are negotiated in Cyprus between the leaders and we are close to conclusion," Eide explained.

"We haven't completely concluded because there are issues in those chapters that can only be finally closed when we know what is happening on the sixth chapter, security and guarantees," he added.

This sixth chapter is an issue intrinsically linked to outside players, namely the three guarantor powers, since it is a legacy of a series of treaties signed in 1960.

The hope is to finally create a united, federal Cyprus, thus putting to an end to over 40 years of division.

If a deal were to be reached in coming weeks, it would subsequently be put to a public vote to both sides of the ethnically-divided island.

Cyprus has been divided in two since 1974 after Turkish troops occupied the northern part of the small Mediterranean island in reaction to a coup by the military rulers of Greece at the time.

While the southern Greek Cypriot side is recognized by the international community and is a member of the European Union (EU), only Ankara officially recognizes the break-away northern region.

"There is momentum now and larger political developments remind us that it's very important to use these coming days as effectively as we can," Eide added. Endit