Quick Cyprus update

I expect there won't be a lot to report on this for a while, so I thought I'd put in this brief mention that the talks about the future of Cyprus have started. As the BBC reports,

Greek Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash arrived in Nicosia's buffer zone for the UN-brokered talks. ...

The BBC's Tabitha Morgan in Nicosia says the signs for success are good.

Our correspondent says the current formula ties both Mr Papadopoulos and Mr Denktash into a process virtually guaranteed to end in agreement.

Turkey needs a solution to help its bid for European Union membership, and the EU itself wants a united Cyprus to join in May, rather than just the Greek part of the island, as currently proposed. ...

Unresolved issues include the powers of the central government, the number of Greek Cypriot refugees to return to the north, land concessions and the number of Turkish troops on the island.

In short, it's in everyone's interests to work out something mutually acceptable. Of course, that's almost always true, but in this instance both the process and the political reality point in that direction. We should know within a few weeks of the optimism is justified.

Addendum: Al-Jazeera.net has an article on some of the worries among street-level Greeks and Turks on the island.

"When I came here a year or so ago," leading Turkish columnist Ferai Tinc told Al Jazeera.net from Nicosia, "almost everyone wanted to sign the Annan Plan.

"Now though, as things have got more serious, many are putting on the brakes."

As the idea of reunification moves from the theoretical to the real and the time from the someday to the imminent, people are, natuarally, becoming more focused on the details. What's good about it is that the concerns are on hows, not shoulds or musts. For example, a large number of Greeks fled to the southern part of the island in the face of the Turkish invasion in 1974, and one of the issues to be addressed is, again, their return. But the concerns revolve around "what sort of arrangements are we going to make?" There don't seem to be a lot of Greek Cypriots going "We will take back what is ours!" or Turkish Cypriots going "We will defend to the death what is ours!" And that is encouraging.