NICOSIA, July 19 (AFP) - Turkish Cypriot legislators Monday rejected a proposal to hold early elections submitted by prime minister Mehmet Ali Talat`s party in the face of a political deadlock in the breakaway statelet.
Out of the 46 MPs present in the 50-member house of the self-styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), 24 backed a report by a parliamentary committee which opposed early polls, while 22 deputies voted it down.
The outcome effectively meant that parliament rejected the proposal for early elections, which Talat had envisaged for September.
The TRNC government -- a coalition between Talat`s Republican Turkish Party (CTP) and the Democrat Party (DP) -- has been paralysed since it lost its slender parliamentary majority in May after two DP deputies and one from the CTP quit to carry on as independents.
The resignations left the coalition, which came to power in December, with 23 of the 50 parliamentary seats.
In a bid to inject fresh blood into his coalition, Talat last month offered an opposition party to join the government, but the talks failed.
Talat had proposed the snap polls quite grudgingly, worried that electioneering could disrupt a diplomatic campaign to ease international sanctions against the TRNC following the overwhelming support that Turkish Cypriot gave to a failed UN plan to reunify Cyprus.
The plan, which was voted on both sides of the long-divided island in April, was killed off by a strong "no" in the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot sector.
The failure of the reunification bid ensured that the Greek Cypriots alone joined the European Union on May 1.
Since the referendum, the EU, United Nations and United States have sought measures to break the isolation of the Turkish Cypriots as a reward for the support they gave to the bungled peace initiative.
Cyprus has been split along ethnic lines since 1974 when Turkey occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.