Cyprus protests meeting of Azerbaijan, Turkish Cypriot heads

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The foreign ministry of Cyprus says it’s lodging formal protests against a meeting between the leader of the ethnically split island nation’s breakaway Turkish Cypriots and the president of Azerbaijan amid concerns of a stepped-up partition campaign. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed “disappointment and regret” over the Tuesday meeting Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev had with Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar on the sidelines of the Islamic Solidarity Games in Turkey. It asked the Azerbaijani government on Thursday  to take “corrective steps.” The ministry said the meeting contravened U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning the unilateral, decades-old declaration of a separate Turkish state in northern Cyprus.