The year-round island

On CNN, Cyprus is advertised as a holiday haven with something to offer tourists throughout the year: sun, sea, mountains, hikes, skiing... But in 2009, the island may become a year-round island for international diplomacy and negotiation, although whether it will be a holiday remains to be seen.

Let us rewind to 2004. The Cypriots have a joke about that year's enlargement of the European Union. Contrary to popular reporting, the EU did not gain 10 new members. The number of new members was really 9.66.

It is, of course, a piece of black humour about the northern part of Cyprus, a third of the country, which has been occupied by Turkey since 1974. It is populated by Turkish Cypriots, about 18 per cent of the Cypriot population. A self-declared state, it has not been recognised internationally, with the exception of Turkey. Cyprus was admitted into the EU without the government of the occupied zone being involved in the talks.

Sardonic jokes apart, however, the issue is a deadly serious one. Deadly because people on both sides were killed and went missing in the violence that followed the invasion. There are important issues that still need to be resolved. Plus, the gravity of the fundamental issue may be coming to a head this year.

Last Thursday, Reuters reported that Cypriot President Demetris Christofias declared that Turkey would not be able to join the EU as long as it kept troops stationed in the northern part of Cyprus.

With some European observers arguing that EU-Turkey talks urgently need something to revitalise them, President Christofias's announcement indicates that 2009 may be a dramatic one for Europe and for the prospects of solving a long-standing conflict in the Mediterranean.

That declaration is significant not just in itself but also because of who is making it. President Christofias is a left-winger in the Cypriot context. He represents a change from the various centre-right nationalist Presidents that have negotiated on behalf of Greek Cypriots since the island's division. The hard words addressed to Turkey show a nation-wide Greek-Cypriot resolve with no softer alternative.

I would have thought that time would have diluted this resolve. It was very present when I first visited Cyprus at the tail-end of 1995. This was particularly prevalent in the divided capital of Nicosia. I still remember dozens of dried bouquets of flowers placed at the base of a monument dedicated to Archbishop Makarios, the former President of Cyprus.

For years, Archbishop Makarios was synonymous with Cyprus. I met him in a chance encounter in the Cathedral Museum in Mdina. In the 1970s he fled his country and first found refuge in Malta. I was doing some research for my thesis on the nobles of Malta in the archives of the said museum. I was the only researcher present that day when the then Curator, Fr John Azzopardi, informed me that Archbishop Makarios was visiting. A tall man dressed in black strode through the place.

He stopped to sign the visitors' book. As soon as the entourage disappeared from view I looked up his signature. He had signed in red ink. Impetuously I added my own signature immediately beneath his, and hoped Dun Ġwann's blood pressure would withstand the discovery of my act.

In Cyprus I sought out the Kykkos monastery where Archbishop Makarios had been a novice and close to which he is now laid to rest. I recall that the mountainous journey was a dangerous one, on the foggy one-lane road with visibility down to less than 20 feet.

That Cyprus trip broadened my knowledge of the country and its potential. Scattered around are monuments and places that attest to the Hellenic world of which it forms part: Aphrodite's rock on the way to Pathos, the house of Dionysius with its stunning mosaics, the beautiful Venus statue at the museum of archaeology in Nicosia...

But there are also traces of a wider, diverse inheritance, from Byzantium, Venice at its zenith, and the Ottoman empire.

For me the tragedy of the invasion was captured when I saw Famagusta, the main tourist town right up to 1974. Since then, it has formed part of the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. An old tourist quarter which has been abandoned. To me it looked like a ghost-town.

The contrast could not be more striking with the excellent roads of the island, the hearty food in the restaurants and (something that would be striking to any Maltese today, let alone almost 14 years ago) the solar-panel heaters that all residences had.

Since then, the checkpoints that used to greatly restrict cross-border travel have been removed. Cypriots from both sides are free to visit and interact. All the more reason why we should wish that 2009 will see the final healing of this old wound in Mediterranean Europe.

Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.