By Michele Kambas
NICOSIA (Reuters) - Hardline Cypriot President TassosPapadopoulos's weekend electoral defeat raised prospects onMonday of ending a four-decade division that has on occasionbrought NATO partners Greece and Turkey to the brink of war.
Papadopoulos, 74, was unexpectedly voted out in the firstround of a presidential election on Sunday, opening theFebruary 24 runoff to two candidates seeking swift resumptionof reunification talks -- a move that could help European Unionaspirant Turkey's relations with Brussels.
"A historic era has officially ended... with Papadopoulosthe last of the Mohicans," wrote the Greek Cypriot Simerininewspaper in a front-page editorial.
His defeat came four years after breakaway Turkish northernCyprus had its own 'change of generation', with veteran leaderRauf Denktash bowing out. The two had been old rivals, educatedin London during British colonial rule over Cyprus.
Putting aside months of acrimony, rightwinger IoannisKassoulides and communist Demetris Christofias, competitors atthe runoff, sought Papadopoulos's support on Monday; but hegave no sign to his Democratic Party of rooting for either.
"It was his desire to let the Democratic Party take thedecision on its own," said Kassoulides after meetingPapadopoulos. "I am leaving his office as a friend."
Diplomats, expected to push for relaunch of stalled peacetalks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, said a change ofguard could help end gridlock hampering Turkish EU accessionhopes.
"There was a vote for candidates more proactive about asolution," a western diplomat in Nicosia told Reuters. "I wouldassume that the United Nations would see this as a positivesign, that there is the wish and the will there for asolution."
The last peace effort collapsed in 2004 when Papadopoulos,elected a year earlier, led Greek Cypriot rejection of a UnitedNations blueprint for reunification.
Mediators are expected to take the pulse for the resumptionof talks this year, a possibility which could bode well forTurkey, which has its EU bid assessed in 2009.
TURKISH TROOPS
Christofias had rejected the plan then, and Kassoulides'sparty had supported it, but both accept that the blueprintcannot be revived.
"We are not strangers, we are old friends, and ourcooperation goes back some decades," said Christofias after ameeting with Papadopoulos's party,
Two sources close to Kassoulides said he had held out anolive branch to the Papadopoulos camp, offering EU HealthCommissioner Markos Kyprianou the post of foreign minister.
A Cyprus deal has eluded generations of diplomats since1960s ethnic bloodshed that ended post-independencepowersharing between Greeks and minority Turks.
Communal division became territorial partition of theisland in 1974. Turkey invaded on behalf of ethnic Turks itsaid were endangered by a militant Greek Cypriot coupengineered by the military ruling Greece and seeking union withGreece.
Relations between Greece and Turkey have eased in the lastdecade, but Cyprus remains a raw wound for Greece and Turkey.EU member Cyprus, recognised by the bloc as sole sovereignpower over the island, is unlikely to promote Turkishmembership talks without reunification in some form.
Turkey has 30,000 troops in north Cyprus and is the onlycountry to recognise the breakaway state.
(Editing by Ralph Boulton)
