NICOSIA Turkish-Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash said Tuesday that he was ready to join four-way talks on the divided island's future with Greece, Turkey and the internationally-recognized government in Nicosia. Denktash also appeared to drop his insistence on prior recognition of his breakaway state as a precondition for the talks in the interview published Tuesday in the Turkish-Cypriot daily Kibris. We are ready to reach a preliminary agreement for a four-way conference, the Turkish-cypriot leader said.

We have never avoided a four-way conference, but preliminary talks are necessary to prepare for it. The U.S. State Department's Cyprus coordinator Thomas Miller proposed the idea of a four-way conference on the island's future during recents visits to the island and to Turkey, Turkish diplomats have said. But Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides on April 23 denied that Miller had made any such proposal to his government.

No such thing was put forward to our side, he told the official Cyprus news agency, CNA. Denktash has previously insisted on recognition of the breakaway Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) he declared in 1983 as a precondition for resuming talks with the Greek-Cypriot side which were broken off late last year following the European Union's decision to allow Nicosia to negotiate membership for the island.

(AFP)