Word: cypriotes
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...numbered only 15 trucks and was laden with fewer weapons than the Israeli sources claim. "The Israelis are trying to overplay the quantity of arms as a way to justify this raid and to mobilize the Europeans to crack down on smugglers in the Mediterranean," he said. In January, Cypriot authorities seized an Iranian freighter that the U.S. and Israel claim was shipping arms to Hamas in Gaza. (See pictures of life under Hamas in Gaza...
...island joined the European Union in 2004; the northern, mainly Turkish part has been an international pariah since 1974, when Turkish forces invaded the country after Greece's then ruling military junta vowed to annex the island. Only Turkey recognizes the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; Greek Cypriots refer to it as "occupied territory." The North has just one extradition treaty (with Turkey), and scant police and prosecutorial cooperation with the outside world. "It's a legal black hole," says one Greek Cypriot official...
...talks aimed at finding a political settlement to end the island's division could change all that. In February the Greek Cypriots elected President Dimitris Christofias, an old left-wing acquaintance of the Turkish Cypriot President, Mehmet Ali Talat; the two are more open to an agreement than their predecessors were. And while cooperation improved somewhat after a first crossing opened in 2003, there are now real hopes that some form of loose federation is in sight. Formal negotiations could begin in June...
...North's isolation eases, Turkish Cypriot leaders concede that their territory has fallen into ill repute. "Mistakes were made," Turkish Cypriot Prime Minister Ferdi Soyer told TIME by e-mail. "We are determined to clean up our country and remove all these people who have done bad things." A settlement, if it materializes, would probably lead to tougher regulations and extradition treaties. Dervis Deniz, a former Economy Minister of the North, says it's high time: "The longer we stay isolated, the longer we attract the cowboys and gangsters...
...power of this enormous cache of personal data is evident from some of Interpol's recent actions. In January last year, 11 people presented their Cypriot passports at Monterrey airport in Mexico. The numbers that flashed up on Interpol's database revealed that these documents came from a batch of 850 blank passports stolen in Cyprus; it turned out that the men were Iraqi citizens trying to slip into the U.S. Last April, masked gunmen executed a jewelry heist in Dubai. They left behind DNA samples, which matched those that Interpol had in its database for two Serbian armed robbers...