THE Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Necmettin Erbakan, is planning a one day visit to the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state today to mark the 22nd anniversary of Turkey's military invasion of the island, Anatolia news agency reported yesterday.
The visit will be the first abroad by Mr Erbakan since becoming prime minister on June 28th after forging a coalition deal with the conservative former prime minister, Ms Tansu Ciller.
Mr Erbakan was deputy prime minister in the Ankara government which organised the military invasion of Cyprus on July 20th, 1974, effectively leading to the island's division into Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot sectors.
Turkish Cypriots proclaimed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1983, but the breakaway state has been recognised only by Ankara, and UN sponsored efforts to reunite the island have failed so far.
Two US envoys, Ms Madeleine Albright and Mr Richard Beattie, met Mr Erbakan for talks on Cyprus yesterday.
Ms Albright, the US ambassador to the UN, and Mr Beattie, President Clinton's special emissary on Cyprus, met Mr Erbakan after talks with senior military officials and President Suleyman Demirel. They arrived in Ankara from Cyprus on Thursday after talks with Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot officials.
The Cypriot government will propose substantial reduction of military forces along the island's peace line when talks brokered by Ms Albright start, a spokesman in Nicosia said yesterday.
"When we enter this dialogue the position of our side will be for substantial unmanning not just a few metres," the government spokesman, Mr Yiannakis Cassoulides, said in Nicosia.
The meeting, the first between the military commanders of the Cypriot national guard and the Turkish forces occupying northern Cyprus, was announced by Ms Albright on Thursday.
The leaders of the two armies will discuss ways to defuse tension between the two sides, heightened last month after a Greek Cypriot soldier was killed by a Turkish Cypriot.
Representing the Greek Cypriot side will be National Guard commander Lieut Gen Nicolaos Vorvolakos, a mainland Greek. Opposite him will be Gen Hasan Kundakci, a mainland Turk, commander of the 30,000 strong Turkish forces occupying northern Cyprus, whom diplomats describe as a powerful figure in the breakaway enclave who is actively involved in politics.