N. M. ZHUKOVA Postgraduate student of the Institute of Information Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences In August 2009, the first stage of negotiations on the reunification of Cyprus was completed. During this time, almost 40 meetings were held between Greek Cypriot community leaders Dimitris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Tal Atom. They discussed future governance and power sharing, relations with the EU, community security and guarantees, property and economic issues. Following these meetings, the UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser on Cyprus, Alexander Downer, said that " the current negotiations are the first reading and have made significant progress." Talat, in turn, stressed that " significant progress has been made and that both sides have prepared such a large number of joint documents for the first time in the history of negotiations since 1974." However, Christofias was more reserved in his assessment of the results, admitting that "he expected more progress" 1, but added that "the second stage will be an attempt to reach a greater understanding". The problem of dividing Cyprus into Greek and Turkish parts is still an unresolved and controversial issue. Over the past half-century since the island's independence from Britain, both Greece and Turkey have tried to establish loyal regimes in Cyprus. This was accompanied by skirmishes that led to armed confrontations between representatives of the island's Turkish and Greek communities, which repeatedly jeopardized regional stability. The actual division of the island occurred after the occupation of the northern part of Cyprus by Turkish troops in 1974, and after the declaration of independence of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) in 1983, a new stage of the conflict began, in which the implementation of the idea of a single state for representatives of the two communities became almost impossible. THE ANNAN PLAN AND ITS FIASCO After the division of the island, ther ... Read more