Cyprus deadline

Turkey is ready to sign a UN plan to reunite Cyprus after 30 years of partition, a Turkish official said yesterday, but it was unclear if Greek objections could be cleared before a midnight deadline.

UN chief Kofi Annan, mediating high-pressure talks in the Swiss Alps, was due to meet the Greek and Turkish prime ministers Costas Karamanlis and Tayyip Erdogan in late evening. Turkish agreement to the blueprint and appeals by Western allies would put great pressure on Greece to accede.

"We are ready to sign the plan," a senior Turkish official told Reuters at the Swiss Alpine resort of Buergenstock.

Under the agreed rules of the talks, Secretary General Annan will put the blueprint to separate April referendums in the northern, Turkish zone and the southern, Greek zone of Cyprus with or without accord between the two parties.

The referendums would open the way for Cyprus, focus of bitter rivalry between Nato partners Greece and Turkey, on occasion verging on war, to enter the European Union on May 1 as a united island.

That would head off serious diplomatic problems for the EU, Greece and not least of all Turkey.

If Greece and the Greek Cypriots declined to approve the deal, the chances of it being endorsed by the Greek Cypriots who live in two thirds of the island would be in doubt.

Emotions run high on both sides of the "Green Line" that divides the island. Thousands died in communal bloodshed after independence from Britain in the 1960s. Many more were killed or lost their homes when Turkey invaded in 1974 in response to a militant Greek Cypriot coup aimed at union with Greece.

Failure to reunite the island before EU membership would mean impoverished Turkish Cyprus would be excluded. Greek-Turkish rapprochement could be undermined and Turkey's own hopes of entering the EU would be dealt a serious blow.

Differences appeared to centre on the future of Turkish and Greek forces on the island and whether a deal would live up to EU law on issues like freedom of movement and property.

The poorer Turkish Cypriot minority had been seeking and appeared to have found stronger reassurances on the number of Greeks who would be allowed to settle in their northern part of the island. Turkish nationalists appeal to fears of Turkish Cypriots being "swamped" and eventually driven from the island.

Diplomatic sources said the internationally isolated Turkish Cypriot state had also approved the plan, effectively overruling its hardline leader Rauf Denktash, who boycotted the talks.

Turkish Cyprus has often in the past been portrayed as the guilty party in the breakdown of talks. But the stakes now for Turkey are high with its own EU hopes in sight.