Symbolic crossing in divided Nicosia to open Thursday

NICOSIA  ( 2008-04-02 11:50:51 ) : 

A symbolic crossing over the UN-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia, Europe's last divided capital, will open on Thursday, a diplomatic source told AFP on Wednesday.
"I can confirm that Ledra Street will open on Thursday at 9 am," the source told AFP.
The opening of the Ledra Street crossing, in the heart of a shopping district inside the walled old city, would signal a new climate of trust on Cyprus that has been divided for the past 34 years.
The move was agreed at a breakthrough meeting last month between Cyprus President Demetris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat who also agreed to resume reunification talks in three months.
Ledra Street, in a pedestrian area of Nicosia, would be the sixth such crossing on the divided eastern Mediterranean island to open since April 2003 when Turkish Cypriots for the first time lifted entry restrictions for Greek Cypriots.
The February election of Christofias, a Greek Cypriot, sparked a renewed drive for peace after several years of stalemate under his predecessor Tassos Papadopoulos.
The barricades on Ledra Street were among the first to be erected after intercommunal violence flared in the city in 1963, leading to the arrival the following year of UN peacekeeping troops who have remained ever since.
Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkey seized its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup in Nicosia aimed at uniting the island with Greece.
A UN bid to reunite the island failed in 2004 when the Greek Cypriots voted against the plan in a referendum, although the Turkish Cypriots voted overwhelmingly in favour.