"Divided Cyprus defies years of peace effortsDocument Actions 18/02/2005
Nicosia remains the last divided capital of the European Union, with reunification efforts stalled since the failure last year of a UN settlement plan, and is a major stumbling block to Turkey's aspirations to join the European bloc. The eastern Mediterranean island has been a trouble spot for centuries, seized by empire after empire before plunging into bitter ethnic strife between its Turkish- and Greek-Cypriot communities only three years after it won independence. But its most formidable conflict followed the island's partition in 1974 along ethnic lines when Turkey occupied the northern third with the aim of protecting its kinsmen in the wake of an Athens-engineered Greek-Cypriot coup seeking to unite Cyprus with Greece. "
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