NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The president of Cyprus is defending his proposal for a more decentralized federal government if a reunification deal is reached with the ethnically divided nation's breakaway Turkish Cypriots.
President Nicos Anastasiades said on Tuesday that giving more authority to the island's Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot zones would reduce deadlocks in decision-making at the federal level and make a peace accord more successful.
Anastasiades didn't specify which responsibilities would be deferred to the existing zones, but said during a televised news conference that any decentralization wouldn't compromise Cyprus' territorial integrity, sovereignty, security or economy.
Anastasiades has faced criticism that his proposal deviates from the federal model on which peace negotiations have been based since Cyprus split along ethnic lines in 1974.
