Leaders of Cypriot communities end inconclusive meeting

NICOSIA, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The leaders of the estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities ended a meeting on Monday night without announcing any agreement towards restarting the stalled peace negotiations for the reunification of their partitioned country.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci talked privately for two hours during their first meeting in almost 10 months.

A statement by the United Nations peace mission in Cyprus said they had "a frank and open exchange of views during a two-hour tete-a-tete discussion" before proceeding to dinner with their host, Elizabeth Spehar, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General in Cyprus.

Though expectations were low, sources said before the meeting that an agreement for a process to explore the possibility of further peace negotiations could be expected.

However, the wording of the UN statement dashed hopes that at least some progress forward could be achieved.

Anastasiades approached the meeting with a proposal to resume negotiations from the point they were left when they collapsed at the end of an international conference under the auspices of the UN Secretary General in Switzerland.

Akinci's position was to start a completely new process at an international conference with a time limit for its conclusion.

Anastasiades told journalists after conferring with his close advisors that during the meeting, he and Akinci discussed "with much frankness and very calmly the problems and the prospects for a new dialogue."

"We established the problems on the way to new negotiations, but we also pinpointed common ground," said Anastasiades without going into details.

He also said that he could not exclude the possibility of the UN Secretary General dispatching an emissary to further explore the possibility for a new dialogue.

Anastasiades said that Akinci raised Turkish objections to the government's energy planning and his demand for Turkish Cypriots to have a say in the energy planning.

He said, however, that there was agreement on the opening of two new crossing points, one by the beginning of July and the other by the middle of September. Enditem