Summary A milestone in history of football in Cyprus, which has been split in two for four decades.
GENEVA (AFP) - FIFA announced on Tuesday that it had brokered a landmark deal between the Cyprus Football Association and its opposite number which runs the game in the breakaway Turkish north of the island.
World football s governing body said the accord, marked a "major milestone" in the history of football in Cyprus, a country which has been split in two for four decades.
The deal, signed at FIFA s base in the Swiss city of Zurich, was inked by the Cyprus Football Association s (CFA) president Costakis Koutsokoumnis and Hasan Sertoglu, head of the Cyprus Turkish Football Association (CTFA).
"Both the Cyprus Football Association and the Cyprus Turkish Football Association are today providing the whole world with an excellent example of how football can build bridges and bring people together after a long period of conflict," FIFA president Sepp Blatter said.
"I would like to thank both associations and UEFA for their outstanding contribution to this milestone arrangement," said Blatter, who also signed the accord along with his counterpart from European football s governing body, Michel Platini.
Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops occupied the northern third of the island in response to an Athens-engineered coup in the mainly-Greek south seeking union with Greece.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is recognised only by Turkey.
Its football team is not part of FIFA or UEFA, with the squad from the internationally-recognised Republic of Cyprus the island s sole representative in the global game.
Under Tuesday s deal, FIFA said, the CTFA becomes a member of the CFA as an "association in accordance with the CFA s statutes and regulations."
"Furthermore, the CFA will continue to be a member of FIFA and UEFA as well as the governing body responsible for organising, servicing and administering football in Cyprus and for all international football activities in the country," it said.
Both sides also agreed to set up a joint committee to work towards implementing the deal, which FIFA said "only concerns football-related matters".
The goal, it added, is to "unify and facilitate the progress of football within the football communities on the island of Cyprus through a relationship based on trust, mutual respect and goodwill".
The football deal comes as Cyprus s political leaders edge closer to a return to the negotiating table, a year after UN-brokered talks were suspended after Turkish Cypriots walked out to protest the south taking the European Union s rotating presidency.
The division in Cypriot football pre-dates the 1974 split, with the CTFA having been set up in the 1950s.
Turkish-speakers pulled out of island-wide football as ethnic tensions spiralled in the final years of British rule -- Cyprus gained independence in 1960 after a four-year war.
