NICOSIA: Adversaries they may be. But they enjoy a bantering rapport, cracking jokes, exchanging good-natured insults, and talking about the past. But when the rival leaders of the estranged Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot communities met on Thursday, it was all business. They began the most vital attempt in years to solve the long-running Cyprus problem before the island enters the European Union. The EU is set to approve Cyprus’s membership in December, giving the Cyprus problem an effective deadline for the first time.

A big responsibility lies on the elderly shoulders of President Glafcos Clerides, the Greek Cypriot president of the internationally recognized government of Cyprus, and Rauf Denktas, the Turkish Cypriot leader. A comprehensive settlement would do more than guarantee peace, prosperity, and security for their communities. Success would also ensure a smooth expansion of the EU, remove a major source of friction between NATO allies, Greece and Turkey, and assist Ankara’s troubled path to joining Europe. Hence the unprecedented interest and diplomatic input from both sides of the Atlantic.

Boosted by this new impetus, mediators hope the personal chemistry between the presidents will help break the stalemate. They will meet under UN auspices two or three times a week in the ”buffer zone” that separates the two communities and hope to outline a comprehensive settlement by June.

Time presses both men, British-trained lawyers who have sparred over the negotiating table for more than three decades. “If they can do a deal, they can both retire gracefully and get the plaudits,” says a senior Western diplomat here. “There’s no doubt there’s a perfectly acceptable solution out there, but the talks will be very arduous.” Mistrust goes back decades. Inter-communal violence erupted in 1963, three years after Cyprus won independence from Britain. Then, in 1974, Cyprus was sundered along religious and ethnic lines when Turkey invaded the northern part after a short-lived coup by the military junta then ruling Greece. Some 35,000 Turkish soldiers have remained stationed there ever since.

Numerous attempts to put Cyprus back together again have failed. Providing new momentum this time is Cyprus’s looming accession to the EU and Turkey’s desire to follow suit. “In the EU, all Cypriots, both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, should feel secure with a guaranteed future in front of them,” says George Vassiliou, Cyprus’s chief EU negotiator. The government of Cyprus, represented internationally by the Greek Cypriots, has been negotiating for the whole island to join even though a third of it is effectively beyond its control.

Denktas has spurned Greek-Cypriot offers to join the EU negotiations and insisted Cyprus must not enter the bloc before a settlement. At the same time, until just last month, he had been boycotting talks to reunify Cyprus, demanding formal acknowledgement of the Turkish-Cypriot state first.

While the EU does not relish the prospect of ushering in a country split by a Berlin-style wall, it has made clear Turkey will not have any veto. Last fall, Romano Prodi, the president of the EU commission, said Cyprus would enter “with or without a solution.” The issue of sovereignty, will be the trickiest, diplomats and officials say. While the Greek Cypriots seek a federal system of two regions operating under a single sovereignty, as called for in UN resolutions, Denktas wants a confederation of two independent sovereign states. —Dawn/LATS Service (c) Christian Science Monitor.