UN offers EU's Rehn help on Cyprus

BRUSSELS, Oct 2 (Reuters) The United Nations will try to help the European Union resolve a dispute over Cyprus ports which threatens to stymie Turkey's EU accession process, UN Deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown said today.

He was speaking after talks with EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, who later left for a two-day visit to Turkey likely to focus partly on the Cyprus issue.

Turkey is refusing to fulfil a customs union obligation to open its ports to shipping from EU member Cyprus, whose Greek Cypriot government it does not recognise. It says the EU must first end the economic isolation of Turkish Cypriot northern Cyprus. Brussels rejects any formal linkage.

''Obviously Europe has some very special needs related to the Turkish accession talks, which touch on this issue of the ports in northern Cyprus, and I ... gave assurances to Olli Rehn that we really were going to be following up on that to see what we could help on that specific European issue,'' Malloch Brown told a news conference.

A UN initiative to find a comprehensive settlement to the 32-year-old division of Cyprus foundered in 2004 when the majority Greek Cypriots rejected the peace plan after Turkey and the Turkish Cypriots had accepted it.

Malloch Brown did not say what help Rehn had requested, but the EU's Finnish presidency is trying to craft a diplomatic deal to avert a potential ''train crash'' in EU-Turkey relations.

A source close to the Cypriot government said Finland had floated proposals for Turkey to open a limited number of ports to Cyprus, while suggesting Turkish Cypriots be permitted to trade directly with the world through a port run jointly by Greek and Turkish Cypriots under EU supervision.

Opening the port of Famagusta on the eastern coast, which would benefit Turkish Cypriots, would be twinned with a move to put neighbouring Varosha, an abandoned Greek Cypriot resort, under international supervision so its Greek Cypriot owners could oversee repairs to their properties, the source said.

Rehn said neither side had rejected the Finnish ideas so far and he urged them to take advantage of the initiative.

REUTERS SK BD2103