February 25, 2008	Monday	Safar 17, 1429

NICOSIA, Feb 24: Communist party leader Demetris Christofias won the presidential election in Cyprus on Sunday and immediately pledged to work to reunify the island after 34 years of division.

His jubilant supporters — some in luxury convertibles — cruised the streets of Nicosia, the world’s last divided capital, waving Cypriot and Che Guevara flags, their car horns blaring.

Greek Cypriot parliament speaker Christofias, 61, garnered 53.36 per cent of the vote against 46.64 per cent for conservative former foreign minister Ioannis Kasoulides, according to final results of an election billed by the local media as one of the most crucial in the history of Cyprus.

“Tomorrow is a new day and there will be many difficulties before us, we need to gather our strength to achieve the reunification of our homeland,” said Christofias, who is due to be sworn in on Friday.

He has pledged to renew contacts with the Turkish Cypriots in a bid to end the partition of the strategic eastern Mediterranean island after negotiations stalled under outgoing president Tassos Papadopoulos.

Christofias becomes the European Union’s sole communist head of state and his victory makes Cyprus the only European country with a communist president apart from ex-Soviet Moldova — over 16 years after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Kasoulides, a 59-year-old MEP who won the first round a week ago when voters dumped Papadopoulos, pledged to work with his rival in efforts to solve the Cyprus problem.

Crowds outside the Nicosia headquarters of Christofias’s AKEL party celebrated victory, waving Cyprus flags emblazoned with the logo “Just society” and shouting “AKEL, AKEL, AKEL”.

“At this time I want to send a message of friendship to ordinary Turkish Cypriots, a message of a common fight to reunite our homeland so we are in charge of our own affairs without foreign intervention,” Christofias said after casting his vote.

Christofias — whose AKEL party has close ties to Moscow — was barely 1,000 votes behind Kasoulides in the first round, but on Sunday beat him by more than 33,000 votes after winning the endorsement of three smaller parties that had backed Papadopoulos.

Local media reported that Christofias had promised the centre-right DIKO party of Papadopoulos three ministries including the foreign affairs portfolio and the socialist EDEK party two.—AFP