Denktas may reject a European Union aid package

The European Union has already invited Cyprus to join the union in 2004. But membership benefits will extend only to areas of the island under Greek Cypriot control – unless a deal ending nearly three decades of hostilities is struck between the northern and southern governments before then.

Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded the island in response to a coup backed by Greece’s then-military government.