Greek Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides on Wednesday declined to take part in UN-mediated indirect negotiations to end the 26-year-old partition of the Mediterranean island.
Instead, Clerides opted to send a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan following Annan's comments Tuesday on the status of the talks, UN Greek Cypriot mission spokeswoman Maria Zoupaniotis said.
In a statement addressed to both parties, Annan had said he believed "the time has come to move ahead."
He added that for the purpose of expediting the negotiations, he had concluded "that the equal status of the parties must and should be recognized explicitly in the comprehensive settlement."
"In view of that development, there was no meeting for the Greek Cypriot side today," Zoupaniotis said.
In a four-line statement released Wednesday evening, the UN special envoy for Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, said only Annan could authoritatively interpret his own comments.
"Accordingly, interpretations placed upon his statement by others do not have any validity."
UN spokesman Fred Eckhard earlier had played down Clerides' decision, saying that there was nothing that called on both parties to hold talks the same day.
Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash met Wednesday with de Soto for about an hour.
Adhering to a media blackout requested by the United Nations, Denktash declined to comment on the nature of the talks but did say he expected the negotiations to continue Thursday.
Cyprus has been divided into a Turkish-controlled north and Greek-controlled south since 1974, when Turkey occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered coup seeking to unite Cyprus with Greece.
The current round of UN-mediated negotiations is the fourth since last December. All three previous ones have failed to move beyond even procedural disputes - UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
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