Cyprus Church Offers Aid to UN Missing Team

Cyprus's Greek Orthodox Church said it would be willing to help finance the work of a U.N. committee that is tracing hundreds of Greeks and Turks missing on the war-divided island for at least three decades.

"The Church cannot remain indifferent to the pain of relatives ... we feel certain the Mufti, the religious leader of the Turkish Cypriots, shares the same feelings and sensitivities," said Archbishop Chrysostomos on Saturday.

The Committee for Missing Persons (CMP) completed in July the first identifications of war victims.

Some 2,000 people are missing, most of them Greek Cypriots who disappeared in the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974 which followed a brief Greek-inspired coup.

Several hundred Turkish Cypriots disappeared in inter-communal conflict in the years before the invasion.

The CMP runs on voluntary contributions and has a $3.0 million budget for 2007. It works with a forensics team from Argentina and scientists from the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities.

"Every demonstration of support, be it political, moral in the case of the church, and financial is warmly welcomed," CMP head Christophe Girod told Reuters.

The CMP has for the past year found multiple unmarked graves on both sides of the partitioned island, helped mainly by eyewitness accounts. It has made more than 315 exhumations and positively identified 57 people.

"We would urge all those who have convincing evidence, or those who witnessed an incident, to approach the CMP and give their testimony," Chrysostomos told a news conference.

Cyprus's church is influential among Greek Cypriots and has extensive business interests ranging from banks to breweries.