Leaders of ethnically split Cyprus agree to work towards reviving talks

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(Reuters) -The rival leaders of ethnically split Cyprus said they were ready to meet the United Nations Secretary-General to discuss the potential for relaunching long-stalled peace talks, the U.N. mission on the island said on Thursday.

Greek Cypriot leader Nikos Christodoulides and Turkish Cypriot leader Tufan Erhurman met on Thursday, in their first encounter since Erhurman, a centre-left moderate, won by a landslide in an October presidential election in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state, pledging to work to revive stalled U.N. talks on reunifying Cyprus.

“(The leaders) expressed their readiness to work towards the next informal meeting in a broader format to be convened by the U.N. Secretary General,” a spokesperson for the U.N. mission said after hosting a meeting between the two leaders in no-man’s land dividing Cyprus’s split capital Nicosia.

They also agreed to explore the possibility of further meetings, the spokesperson said. A U.N. envoy would be visiting Cyprus in early December, he said.

Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup, with seeds of division sown at least a decade earlier when a power-sharing administration fell apart, prompting the dispatch of the U.N. peacekeeping force.

The last round of talks between the two sides collapsed in 2017, with efforts to revive them at a stalemate since.

(Reporting by Michele Kambas; Editing by Alex Richardson)