KYRENIA, April 25: Far from despairing at their Greek rivals' rejection of reunification, Turkish Cypriots felt they had won the moral high ground on Sunday by backing a UN peace deal and deserved to be rewarded with a lifting of economic sanctions.

The majority community voted by three to one in a referendum on Saturday against the UN-proposed reunification deal and will now enter the European Union alone on May 1. But Turkish Cypriots, who voted by 65 percent to 35 in favour of reunification, said the international community should now lift the economic embargo which has hobbled their breakaway state's economy for the past 30 years.

"It is the victory of the people," the Kibrisli daily trumpeted Sunday on its front page, while the Vatan newspaper said: "It is now the turn of the international community" to help.

"Many people voted 'yes' not because they liked the plan, but out of frustration with the international isolation," Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash said following the vote.

Denktash, a hardline nationalist who led the campaign for the "no" vote in his self-styled Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, immediately called for the lifting of the embargo imposed because of his territory's secession. "It is time now for the world to allow us to trade and communicate as free people and to help us repair our economy," Denktash said.

"We abided by our commitments. It is now the turn of the international community to prepare proposals ... to alleviate or remove the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots," said Mehmet Ali Talat, the breakaway state's pro-settlement prime minister.

Speaking in Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, whose government forced Denktash to agree to the referendum in a bid to boost its own chances of joining the European bloc, also called for the lifting of sanctions.

"The embargoes... cannot continue," he said. The EU's executive arm said Turkish Cypriot approval of the plan "signals a clear desire of the community to resolve the island's problems". -AFP