Cyprus leaders to hold new meeting, hope for resumption of peace talks

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades hopes to reignite a dormant UN-backed peace process to reunify the island when he sits down for dinner next week with the Turkish Cypriot leader. “It is not, of course, a formal negotiation, but it is a meeting through which the president hopes to resume talks,” Cyprus government spokesman Prodromos Prodromou said Friday. The UN said there was no fixed agenda for Monday’s dinner date, which is the leaders’ first meeting of any kind since reunification talks collapsed last July, AFP said. The east Mediterranean island has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded and occupied its northern third in response to a coup sponsored by the military junta then ruling Greece.