UN chief pledges help for talks to reunify divided Cyprus

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations secretary-general promised Sunday to lend his personal support to rival Cypriot leaders who are locked in complex talks aimed at reunifying the ethnically divided island nation.

Ban Ki-moon said he and the U.N. will personally do "our utmost" to assist Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and breakaway Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci resolve the decades-old problem.

Ban said he stands ready to help the two sides on whatever they require, including the "international dimensions" of the issue — an indirect reference to intervention rights that were ceded to Greece, Turkey and Britain under the constitution of Cyprus that gained independence from British rule in 1960.

The island's division is a major impediment to Turkey's EU membership bid and complicates energy cooperation on offshore gas deposits in the east Mediterranean.