Nicos Georgiades, a Greek Cypriot grandfather, had waited for nearly half a century to return to the spot where he used to ride his bicycle as a boy before the barricades went up on Nicosia’s main shopping street.

So it was a day of high emotion yesterday when he joined thousands of jubilant Greek and Turkish Cypriots inside the Venetian-era walls of the divided capital to witness the reopening of Ledra Street.

At one point during the celebrations, the Greek Cypriot authorities temporarily closed the checkpoint, saying that Turkish Cypriot police had illegally patrolled part of the street in violation of an agreement. The hitch was soon resolved, however, and the crossing reopened in the evening.

The tearing down of the barricades transforms the most potent symbol of the division of Cyprus into a street that could lead to the reunification of the former British colony.

“Now I am looking forward to taking my grandson along the same street,” Mr Georgiades, 66, said as the seven-year-old boy, perched on his grandad’s shoulders, devoured an ice-cream. “It will be very special for me.”

A carnival atmosphere prevailed as Greek and Turkish Cypriots, some bearing flowers, gathered on either side of the street. After a brief ceremony the mayors of the city’s two communities, looking like a proud couple celebrating the birth of their first child, enjoyed a coffee and a cake together on the Greek Cypriot side.

Cypriots can now walk down Ledra Street — called Lokmaci Street by Turkish Cypriots — without their stroll ending abruptly at armed sentry posts and a bizarre 70-yard strip of weed-infested no man’s land patrolled by British UN peacekeepers.

“I couldn’t sleep all night. I will walk to St Loukas church \ and light a candle,” said Loukia Skordi Salidou, a 65-year-old Greek Cypriot woman. “My generation is dying. Thank God I’m alive to see this.”

Turkish Cypriot peace campaigners, some weeping with joy, beat drums, chanted peace songs and released white doves to welcome Greek Cypriots.

Kenan Aritoglu, a Turkish Cypriot optometrist with a shop near Ledra Street, said: “These are small steps. I’m very excited to be crossing this symbolic gate. I’m hopeful this initiative will lead to other initiatives to solve the problem.”

Gurkhas in the UN force had toiled with municipal workers in recent days to clear debris, repave the street and shore up once-elegant but long- derelict and bullet-pocked buildings.

Cyprus has been divided since the Turkish invasion of 1974. But Ledra Street was divided even before that: barricades were first put up by Turkish Cypriots in 1958, before Cypriot independence two years later.

In those days British troops had another name for it — Murder Mile.

The barricades came down again but were re-established as violence broke out in 1963. The following year came the UN peacekeepers, who have been here for so long that sons have patrolled the same areas as their fathers. “We’re proud to be taking over on a historic day,” said Corporal Duncan Macleod, 32, from Dunoon, Scotland, whose 7 Transport Regiment began its sixth-month posting yesterday.

ID cards or passports are still needed to move between the two sides, but a new crossing at the heart of the capital is of psychological as well as practical importance.

“By opening this street, we hope that the road to a solution to the Cyprus problem will also open,” George Iacovou, chief adviser to President Christofias, the new Greek Cypriot leader, said.

The optimism was palpable in Ledra Street yesterday — apart from anything else, the area has long been eyed up as ripe for regeneration — but ordinary Cypriots, politicians and UN mediators are all used to talks collapsing.

“This is a great day but the Cyprus problem has not been solved. It’s a crack in the wall,” Lellos Demetriades, the Greek Cypriot former Mayor of Nicosia, told The Times.

“But many cracks make walls come tumbling down — we have to be optimistic.”

An island divided

— Ledra Street had been more or less permanently divided since 1964, when British soldiers laid out barbed wire to separate Greek and Turkish communities

— Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960 in a power-sharing deal between the Greek Cypriot majority and the Turkish Cypriot minority

— In 1974 the island was divided after a Turkish invasion in response to a coup by the junta, who wanted unification with Greece. An estimated 165,000 Greek Cypriots and 40,000 Turkish Cypriots were uprooted — about one third of the population

— The EU recognises the Greek Cypriot Government. The Turkish Cypriot state is recognised only by Ankara

— Greek Cypriot-led Cyprus has veto rights over Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU

Source: Times archive

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