Security Council backs UNFICYP cutback

SECURITY Council members late on Monday night backed UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan’s call for a sharp cutback in the UN peacekeeping force on Cyprus, council diplomats said.
Annan last month recommended that the number of UN soldiers on the island be reduced to 860 from the current 1,230 after concluding the security situation had become “increasingly benign” in recent years.

During a closed-door discussion of Annan’s findings, none of the council’s 15 members objected to the cutback, and Britain, the council president for October, said it would draft and circulate a resolution making the cut, diplomats said.

No date was set for a vote.

UNFICYP has been in Cyprus since 1964 and patrols the 180 km Green Line that separates Turkish and Greek Cypriots.

The mission’s current annual budget is $52 million, although Greece and the Cyprus government voluntarily pick up nearly half the cost. Annan said the troop cuts would save money, but the amount would not be known for some months.

The force was deployed to quell the outbreak of violence between the two communities in 1964. Cypriots started to mingle freely in April 2003 after Turkish Cypriot authorities eased restrictions on people crossing from one side to the other.

But efforts to reunite the island ground to a halt after Greek Cypriots rejected Annan’s reunification blueprint last April.

Some council members then argued that scarce UN resources and the Greek Cypriots’ ‘no’ vote called for a re-examination of the mission’s mandate.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.