Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat has donated 50,000 U.S. dollars to the Committee on Missing Persons in Cyprus (CMP) for its project on the exhumation, identification and return of remains of Cypriot victims, Xinhua reported.
The CMP said in a statement released on Tuesday that it was " extremely grateful" for Talat's donation, which he made during a visit on Monday to the CMP Anthropological Laboratory inside the UN buffer zone.
"This latest donation will contribute to the ongoing implementation of the CMP project," said the statement.
The CMP is striving to locate, exhume, identify and return the remains of as many individuals as possible in order to bring an end to the painful uncertainty which has affected more than one thousand families, from both Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities, who have lost tracks of their beloved ones for at least three decades.
To date, the remains of over 486 missing persons have been exhumed while 136 have been identified and returned to the families concerned. They were victims of the inter-communal clashes in the 1960s and military conflicts in 1974 which led to the division of the eastern Mediterranean island.
Talat said during his visit that the Turkish Cypriot side is doing whatever it can to support the CMP project.
"The Turkish Cypriot side will continue to support efforts to find out what happened to the missing persons, both materially and morally," Turkish Cypriot media quoted Talat as saying.