CYPRIOT peace campaigners and trade unions called a rally last night in support of two days of reunification talks which wrapped up yesterday.

The communist Progressive Party of Working People (Akel) urged a mass turnout at the evening gathering in Cetinkaya stadium in the buffer zone between the government-controlled south of the island and the Ankara-backed pseudostate in the north, which have been separated since the Turkish invasion of 1974.

The event was organised by the Pancyprian Federation of Labour and the Turkish Cypriot Platform for Solution and Reunification.

Some 120 organisations signed a joint declaration in support of the negotiations at the Swiss resort of Mont Pelerin.

Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci aim to delineate zones that each side will govern as part of a federated state.

Akel said: “We could not be absent from such a meeting. We call on the Cypriot people to dynamically participate in this bicommunal event, embracing this initiative in mass numbers.”

On Friday, some 200 Greek Cypriots protested outside the presidential palace in Nicosia, demanding that any reunification deal includes the return of the homes and farmland that they were forced to abandon in 1974.

Charalambos Pittas, mayor of the town of Morphou, said the demonstration was intended to get Mr Anastasiades to keep his pledge of making the fertile town a part of the ongoing reunification talks.

“What counts for us is that the president keeps his word that Morphou is returned,” Mr Pittas said.