NICOSIA, Nov 22 (AFP) - Breakaway Turkish Cypriot premier Mehmet Ali Talat, a champion of UN efforts to reunify the island in time for EU membership in May, Monday abandoned efforts to form a new administration after losing his parliamentary majority.
Talat formally notified veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash that he had been unable to break the deadlock in the legislature since he first tendered his resignation last month and called for early elections.
"It has become obvious that nobody in this parliament will be able to form a government," said Talat, who heads the left-leaning Republican Turkish Party.
Right-wing opposition leader Dervis Eroglu of the National Unity Party had been given a chance to forge a parliamentary majority earlier this month but he too failed.
The political deadlock is likely to be protracted -- both parliament and Dentash have the right to call early elections but not for another month, making polls unlikely before February next year.
Talat, who enjoys strong US and EU support for his championing of a UN reunification plan rejected by Greek Cypriots in April, has complained that the political impasse is complicating Western efforts to reward Turkish Cypriots by easing their economic isolation.
But the US State Department vowed last month that it would press ahead regardless with efforts to open up trade with the breakaway state declared in 1983 but still recognised only bu Ankara.
"We respect the democratic process in northern Cyprus," its spokesman Richard Boucher said. "We'll continue ... to work more closely with Turkish Cypriots and to offer them chances and opportunities that they haven't had."
Cyprus has been split along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkey seized its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup aimed at uniting the island with Greece.
11/22/2004 14:53 GMT - AFP