AP Interview: Turkish Cypriot leader warns failure could lead to permanent partition

The election of a new president in Cyprus could bring a solution by the end of the year to the island's decades-long partition, but failure now could leave it divided forever, the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state's leader said.

Mehmet Ali Talat said the Turkish Cypriot side was willing to be flexible.

"We are ready to find a solution to this problem. We will be flexible, we will work in good faith and we will be always active," he told The Associated Press Monday. "We believe that a solution is possible ... for the benefit of both the Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots."

Peace talks to reunite the strategically located war-divided island have been stalled for years. But Dimitris Christofias, who won a crucial presidential election runoff Sunday, has pledged to quickly meet with Talat.

"It is very possible to find a solution by the end of the year," Talat said.

Christofias, a 61-year-old Soviet-educated history professor, heads a party that grew out of Cyprus' outlawed communist party in the 1940s. He and Talat, 55, share the same left-wing political ideology, and have enjoyed friendly relations in the past.

No date has been set for a meeting, but "at least he is somebody who is not denying the role of the Turkish Cypriot leader in a solution and he doesn't deny to meet the Turkish Cypriot leader," Talat said in an interview in his office across the Green Line in Nicosia, Europe's last divided capital.

"Whereas his predecessor was ... directly declining to meet. Even to have a coffee."

The outgoing president, Tassos Papadopoulos, was instrumental in the Greek Cypriot rejection of a U.N. reunification plan in 2004. The Turkish Cypriots approved the plan in a separate referendum.

Papadopoulos was ousted in a surprise result to the first round of the presidential election on Feb. 17, and Christofias' election has injected optimism into the moribund peace process.

But Talat warned of dangers ahead.

"I want to be (an) optimist. There are reasons to be (an) optimist," he said. "But of course we will see ... everybody has to be very careful in order to lead the people.

"The leaders have to take responsibility, otherwise after many efforts ... again we may face another referendum failure. And if it happens again, nobody can think of the reunification of the island again."

Talat said he envisaged a solution that would be similar to the U.N. peace plan that 76 percent of Greek Cypriots rejected in 2004.

"The Greek Cypriots changed their leader. I think they are looking for a change of policy also," he said.

But it might not be that simple.

Greek Cypriots may have ousted Papadopoulos in an election result seen largely as a rejection of his handling of reunification efforts, but they will need to be convinced that a new plan would work.