Europe

3 key foreign ministers join talks aimed to reunify Cyprus

Associated Press
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British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, right, arrives for the conference on Cyprus on the sideline of the Cyprus peace talks at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP) (The Associated Press)

Greek Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades arrives for the conference on Cyprus on the sideline of the Cyprus peace talks at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP) (The Associated Press)

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini, left, and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, second from left, attend the conference on Cyprus on the sideline of the Cyprus peace talks at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2017. (Laurent Gillieron/Pool Photo via AP) (The Associated Press)

The top diplomats from Britain, Greece and Turkey are converging on Geneva as U.N.-hosted talks aimed to reunify long-divided Cyprus shift up to discussions about security.

In what the U.N. envoy for Cyprus has called a "historic" development, Foreign Ministers Boris Johnson of Britain, Nikos Kotzias of Greece and Mevlut Cavusoglu of Turkey were raising the talks to high-level international diplomacy for the first time.

Thursday's talks are expected to consider security in Cyprus, a country with two main ethnicities. Turkey has stationed some 35,000 troops in the breakaway north following a 1974 coup by Greek Cypriots hoping to unify Cyprus with Greece.

Capping three days of talks this week, leaders of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities exchanged maps Wednesday outlining the zones that each community would control in a hoped-for federation.