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3 key foreign ministers join talks aimed to reunify Cyprus

Foreign ministers of Greece, Britain, and Turkey have raised the talks to high-level international diplomacy for the first time.

Geneva: The top diplomats from Britain, Greece and Turkey are converging on Geneva as UN-hosted talks aimed to reunify long-divided Cyprus shift up to discussions about security.

In what the UN envoy for Cyprus has called a "historic" development, Foreign Ministers Boris Johnson of Britain, Nikos Kotzias of Greece and Mevlut Cavusoglu of Turkey were raising the talks to high-level international diplomacy for the first time.

Thursday's talks are expected to consider security in Cyprus, a country with two main ethnicities. Turkey has stationed some 35,000 troops in the breakaway north following a 1974 coup by Greek Cypriots hoping to unify Cyprus with Greece.

Capping three days of talks this week, leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities exchanged maps Wednesday outlining the zones that each community would control in a hoped-for federation.

( Source : AP )
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