Talks on the long-running Cyprus conflict are the best chance, but maybe not the last chance, to get an agreement, U.N. envoy Espen Barth Eide on Tuesday on the eve of negotiations between the leaders of the two Cypriot sides in a Swiss mountain resort.
"There is an awareness that there is no time like the present," he told a news conference in Geneva. "Make no mistake, it is not going to be easy, there is no guarantee of success," he told a news conference, calling it the "most complex" round in the series of talks.
Foreign ministers from the three guarantor powers - Britain, Greece and Turkey - are due to stay this week to take part in security discussions, Eide said.
The split in 1974 uprooted 165,000 Greek Cypriots, while about 40,000 Turkish Cypriots were displaced in intercommunal violence in the 1960s and a population transfer in 1975.
Turkish Cypriots, who were targeted by Greek Cypriot nationalists before the war, want Turkey to remain a guarantor while Greek Cypriots want the guarantor system dismantled due to Turkish intervention in 1974.
