Cyprus' president said Thursday that he would not seek re-election in 2013 if ongoing talks to reunify the ethnically-split island fail, according to AP. Dimitris Christofias, a Greek Cypriot, was elected in 2008 on a campaign promise to resume stalled peace talks with breakaway Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat. But there has been only limited progress after 19 months of slow-moving negotiations. «I underline clearly; if no Cyprus settlement is reached by the end of my first term, I will not seek a second term. My current term in office will be my first and last,» Christofias said during a news conference in the divided Cypriot capital. Cyprus was divided into an internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot south and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Talat faces possible ouster in an April 18 election in the north. Opinion polls show him trailing to a hardliner. Christofias said there have been many meetings by the two sides, but that both are still far apart in their positions and that the Turkish Cypriot side was being influenced by Ankara. «The failure to achieve impressive progress is owed to the distance in positions between the two sides and not because more meetings haven't been made,» he said. «Wherever the Turkish Cypriot side showed a willingness equivalent to our own, there have been convergences. Unfortunately, in many of its proposals, the Turkish Cypriot side, with the backing of Ankara, remained static in older positions.»
