Cyprus pledges €300K to enhance missing persons efforts

The recruitment of eight new archaeologists and the purchase of an excavator is ensured by the funding contributed by the Republic of Cyprus to the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP), following the signing of an agreement between the Republic of Cyprus and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) at the Presidential Palace, in Nicosia, on Monday.

The Deputy Minister to the President, Irene Piki, signed the agreement with the officer in charge of the United Nations Development Programme, Alexandre Pieto. The agreement concerned the Republic of Cyprus' €300,000 contribution to the Committee on Missing Persons.

Pieto told Piki that the government's contribution shows "the trust that you have in us in doing this very important and sensitive work for Cyprus".

On her part, Piki said that "the agreement shows - by the increase of our commitment to financing the program - how important it is for us".

The representative of the Greek Cypriot community in the CMP, Leonidas Pantelides, noted that with the money provided by the agreement "we will hire 8 new archaeologists and we will buy an excavator, to increase our excavation capacity".

Also present during the signing ceremony was the Head of Humanitarian Affairs for Missing and the Enclaved, Anna Aristotelous.

After the ceremony, the UNDP Office made a brief presentation to the Deputy Minister to the President on other activities of the Office in Cyprus in the fields of Environment, Energy and Social Cohesion.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied 37% of its territory. Since then, the fate of hundreds of people remains unknown.

A Committee on Missing Persons has been established, upon agreement between the leaders of the two communities, with the scope of exhuming, identifying and returning to their relatives the remains of 492 Turkish Cypriots and 1,510 Greek Cypriots, who went missing during the inter-communal fighting of 1963-1964 and in 1974.