Thousands of Greek Cypriot university students in Britain are flying home to vote in Sunday's presidential elections, which could be a turning point for the divided island and influence Turkey's EU accession course.

With the three leading candidates in a virtual dead heat, political parties have invested millions of pounds in footing most of the bill for chartered flights: every vote counts. “These are Cyprus's most important elections ever because more and more Cypriots see the next few years as either bringing reunification or increasing the drift to partition,” a senior European envoy said.

Seeking a second-five year term is President Papadopoulos, 74, who led Greek Cypriots in a rejection of a UN reunification proposal four years ago. The Annan plan, as it was called, did not meet his community's basic demands, he said. Most polls show Mr Papadopoulos a whisker ahead of Demetris Christofias, the leader of Akel, the nominal communist party, and Ioannis Kasoulides, a former Foreign Minister who is running as an independent backed by the right-wing Disy party, which supported the Annan plan. A run-off ballot on February 24 is certain.

Mr Christofias, 62, and Mr Kasoulides, 59, are moderates who have pledged to bring new commitment and flexibility to any fresh peace negotiations with the estranged Turkish Cypriot community.

Since the former British colony joined the EU in 2004, represented solely by the Greek Cypriots, it has frustrated Turkey's EU aspirations, and jousting between Ankara and Nicosia has hampered EU-Nato cooperation in Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Cyprus has been split on ethnic lines since Turkey invaded the north in 1974 after a short-lived Greek Cypriot coup engineered by the junta then ruling Greece. “There's a feeling that the Cyprus problem disrupts decision-making too much. Europe wants to get it out of the way,” said James Ker-Lindsay, a Cyprus expert at Kingston University, London.

Mr Papadopoulos's opponents view the President as a hardliner - a label he strongly rejects - and accuse him of foot-dragging on a settlement while losing Nicosia allies in Europe.

[]Mr Papadopoulos's two main rivals have said that their first move if elected would be to contact Mustafa Talat, the Turkish Cypriot leader, with a view to relaunching peace talks.

Mr Papadopoulos said that he has new settlement proposals too. Apart from presiding over a buoyant economy, his main appeal is his perceived strength to resist big power pressure to accept a bad peace deal.

If successful, the Soviet-educated Mr Christofias would be the EU's first communist president but Brussels need not worry, analysts say. Akel's ideology is Marxist-Leninist but the biggest Greek Cypriot party is pragmatic and has several Orthodox as active members. Diplomats liken Akel to old Labour in Britain.

Mr Christofias has assured businessmen that he will not tamper with the booming market economy, insists that his priority is a Cyprus solution and rejects opponents' claims that he is Eurosceptic. With the focus on a settlement Mr Christofias said that he would not pick a fight, for the time being, with London over Britain's two sovereign military bases in Cyprus.

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