In the heart of Nicosia’s walled Old City, two UN peacekeepers unlock a padlocked door and step back five decades. They are entering the buffer zone that separates Greek Cypriots from Turkish Cypriots, and thousands of troops, on the divided island.

Like countless soldiers before them, the blue berets clambered over rooftops, past drying laundry lines, before walking along crumbling streets and through abandoned flats and businesses caked in thick layers of dust.

“When you first get here it’s really quite surreal, obviously it’s not something that most people will ever really experience,” Sapper Michael Clasper, a British peacekeeper from 71 Engineer Regiment, told AFP.

This year marks a triple anniversary for the Mediterranean island. It’s 60 years since the arrival of the blue berets, 50 since an Athens-backed coup aimed at uniting Cyprus with Greece triggered a Turkish invasion that divided the island, and 20 since a referendum saw Greek Cypriots reject a UN reunification plan.

The appointment of a new UN envoy last month has sparked a flicker of hope for a new push for a settlement, but with six decades of failed negotiations behind it, the UN faces questions of how much longer it should stay.বিস্তারিত