(The Associated Press) UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed veteran U.N. troubleshooter Taye-Brook Zerihoun to head the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Cyprus and oversee newly restarted talks to reunify the divided Mediterranean island, the U.N. announced Thursday.
Zerihoun, an Ethiopian who joined the United Nations in 1981, will replace Michael Moller, of Denmark, as special representative of the secretary-general in Cyprus and head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.
Cyprus was split into an internationally recognized Greek Cypriot south and a breakaway Turkish Cypriot north in 1974, when Turkey invaded in response to a short-lived coup by people who wanted to unite the island with Greece. Last month, the Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders agreed to restart peace talks on reunifying their ethnically split island.
Okabe noted that the Security Council must confirm Zerihoun’s appointment. The council’s approval is virtually certain and considered a formality.
Zerihoun is currently serving as the secretary-general’s deputy special representative in the U.N. Mission in Sudan , where some 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are enforcing the 2005 agreement that ended Africa’s longest civil war between Sudan’s Muslim government and Christian and animist rebels in the semiautonomous south.
He also has been serving as the chief U.N. mediator for the Darfur peace talks since October 2007 in support of the efforts of U.N. special envoy Jan Eliasson.
In addition to working extensively on issues related to Sudan, Zerihoun has worked on special political questions at U.N. headquarters in New York and directed the division that deals with the Horn of Africa and central and southern Africa.