Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions his Department has had with the Turkish government on locating people missing as a result of violence in Cyprus in 1974.

We share the concerns of both the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities over the missing persons following the events of 1974. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has not had any recent discussions with the Turkish government about this, but we take very seriously the issue of missing persons in Cyprus. We supported UN Security Council Resolution 2197 renewing the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), which called upon all parties to provide more expeditious, full access to all areas. The UK also contributes to the work of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which supervises the implementation of the European Court of Human Rights judgement in Cyprus v Turkey of 2001 on missing persons. We strongly support the humanitarian work of the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) in Cyprus, in which bi-communal teams undertake painstaking and sensitive work. So far, the remains of 568 individuals have been identified and returned to their families. We have supported the work of the CMP financially, donating US$220,133 bilaterally, while EU funding of the CMP, to which the UK contributes, totalled US$16,289,719 from 2006-14. In addition to this financial support, the UK facilitates the CMP by enabling it to work from a British-owned site in the Buffer Zone, thus easing its administration costs. The British High Commission in Nicosia remains in regular contact with the CMP to establish how the UK may further support its work.