The leaders of the two communities in Cyprus have agreed to jointly visit the anthropological laboratory of the Committee on Missing Persons.
According to the UNSG`s Special Representative in Cyprus Lisa Buttenheim, President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu met on Friday in the UN protected zone in the area of the old Nicosia airport, “in a positive and friendly atmosphere”.
“The leaders agreed to jointly visit the anthropological laboratory of the Committee on Missing Persons on a date to be agreed in the near future”, she added.
Buttenheim said that the two leaders engaged in a discussion on the substance of the negotiations and on methodology and exchanged views and proposals on confidence – building measures and Technical Committees.
They will continue their discussions at the next meeting on Monday 7 of July.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied its northern third. President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Dervish Eroglu are engaged in peace talks, aiming to reunite the country under a federal roof.
The Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) is a bi-communal body established in 1981 by the leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities with the participation of the United Nations. Following the establishment of an agreed list of missing persons, the CMP’s objective is to recover, identify, and return to their families, the remains of 2001 persons (502 Turkish Cypriots and 1,493 Greek Cypriots) who went missing.
The CMP employs a bi-communal forensic team of more than 60 Cypriot archeologists, anthropologists and geneticists, who conduct excavations throughout the island and anthropological and genetic analyses of remains at the CMP Anthropological Laboratory.
