Peacekeeping

Turkey attaches "great importance" to the meetings with Greece to discuss Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) and notes the importance of dialogue between the two sides, sources at the Turkish defence ministry said on Thursday, during the regular weekly press briefing.

The sources also referred to the next meeting to discuss CBMs, which is being scheduled for April 22.

Decades on from the ethnic division of Cyprus, tensions persist along the 180-kilometer buffer zone separating breakaway Turkish Cypriots from Greek Cypriots in the internationally recognized south, the head of the United Nations peacekeeping force on the island said Monday.

After a three-year and nine-month hiatus, the meeting on confidence building measures (CBMs) between Greece and Turkey took place on Monday in Ankara, with the two countries agreeing to begin the implementation of the previously agreed-upon measures on the list. 

The authorities in the Turkish-occupied part of Cyprus must "immediately withdraw all personnel and equipment from the UN buffer zone," three members of the US Congress have said, after Turkish Cypriots assaulted a number of international peacekeepers for obstructing construction teams building a road that would encroach on the buffer zone.

UN peacekeepers on Cyprus have condemned an assault on its personnel and damage to its vehicles "by personnel from the Turkish Cypriot side" on Friday morning.

In a statement, the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) said the incident took place inside the buffer zone near Pyla as its peacekeepers blocked unauthorized construction work in the area.

Over the past 75 years, the United Nations sent more than 2 million peacekeepers to help countries move away from conflict, with successes from Liberia to Cambodia and major failures in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Moldova expressed concern on Friday after Russian soldiers stationed in the breakaway region of Transnistrian, participating in the peacekeeping mission in the buffer zone between Moldova and the region, undertook military manoeuvres without seeking Chisinau's consent.

The UN Security Council just renewed the mandate for UNFICYP - the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus - for another year instead of for six months. The renewal comes amid controversy over the UN Secretary General's Special Representative in Cyprus, and is also occurring less than a week before the first round of presidential elections in Cyprus.

Britain's Princess Anne cast aside the controversy surrounding her nephew Prince Harry and carried on with her royal duties Wednesday by visiting British soldiers serving with a United Nations peacekeeping force on ethnically divided Cyprus.

The members of the UN peacekeeping force asked him to leave the field he has been farming for 15 years so as not to catch him