Military

23 April 2004 – With Cypriots heading to the polls tomorrow, the United Nations today handed over the authenticated version of a plan to reunify Cyprus ahead of its entry into the European Union on 1 May.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Special Adviser on Cyprus, Alvaro de Soto, conveyed to both Cypriot parties and to the guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and the United Kingdom, the Comprehensive Settlement of the Cyprus Problem, a UN spokesman said in New York.

Mr. Annan stepped in last month to finalize the plan, which if approved, would create a United Cyprus Republic composed of a Greek Cypriot constituent state and Turkish Cypriot constituent state linked by a federal government.

On Wednesday the Security Council failed to adopt a resolution that would have taken decisions on matters related to the plan, such as the dissolution of the current UN Peacekeeping force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) in favour of a new UN Settlement Implementation Mission in Cyprus (UNSIMIC) to oversee the process of carrying out the plan. The decisions would have been contingent on the outcome of Saturday's balloting, and be null and void if the agreement did not enter into force for any reason.