Peace talks on divided Cyprus are to resume in Geneva on June 28, the United Nations said Friday, ending a stalemate on procedure that had threatened to derail two years of negotiations.

Talks between Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci stalled last month in disagreement about a conference in Geneva including Britain, Turkey and Greece that would address post-settlement Cyprus security issues.

Both leaders met with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Sunday in New York and agreed to resume talks.

They will both travel to Geneva for the negotiations later this month, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement Friday, along with Greece, Turkey and Britain as guarantor powers, and the European Union as an observer.

Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974, triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup.

Security issues related to the presence of up to 30,000 troops in the breakaway north of the island are a key sticking point in talks. Greek Cypriots perceive their presence after a settlement as a threat, while Turkish Cypriots say the troops are necessary for their security.
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The carnage of the London Bridge attack could have been worse: One of the attackers tried to rent a larger truck that could have killed more people, but his payment was declined. The bloodthirsty gang was also shot dead before they could make their way back to the van where their petrol bombs were stored.

In a rare glimpse into the weeklong investigation, police released details on Saturday that showed Khuram Butt originally tried to rent a 7.5 ton truck. The intended truck was smaller but similar to the one used in the Nice attack last year that killed 86 people and injured hundreds in the resort town in the south of France.

After his payment was declined, Butt and his two accomplices rented a smaller van that they used to plow into crowds before they leapt from the vehicle and went on a stabbing rampage in an attack that left eight people dead and nearly 50 people injured. It was the third such deadly attack in Britain in the three months.

​Knives featured pink blades 

After leaving the small white van, the men used 12-inch knives with bright pink blades, according to Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command.

Police also disclosed that multiple petrol bombs were discovered in the van, and a copy of the Quran opened at a page “describing martyrdom” was found at one of the attackers’ houses.

Investigators believe three victims were killed on the bridge, including one man who was thrown into the Thames River, before the attackers left the vehicle and stabbed five people to death around London’s busy Borough Market, Haydon said. Police believe Butt was driving the van.

“When I come back to Butt trying getting hold of a 7.5 ton lorry — the effect could have been even worse,” he said.

Molotov cocktails found

More than a dozen wine bottles filled with flammable liquid and rags wrapped around them in the shape of Molotov cocktails were found in the van. Two blow torches were also found.

Haydon said the men may have been planning even more bloodshed if they had survived their stabbing spree and made it back to the van.

Police also found a number of office chairs, gravel and a suitcase in the van.

Detectives believe the gravel may have been placed in the vehicle to make it heavier, or as part of a cover to justify hiring it, while the chairs may have been used to convince family and friends they were moving furniture.

Butt, a 27-year-old Pakistan-born British citizen, and his two accomplices, Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, and Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent, were shot dead by armed police eight minutes after the first emergency call.

Fake suicide belts

The three attackers were wearing fake suicide belts consisting of plastic water bottles wrapped in grey duct tape.

Haydon described the pink knives as “pretty unusual” and appealed for anyone with information about where they came from to contact police.

Police raided Redouane’s small residence on Tuesday and said he had been renting it since April. This was the safe house where the attack was planned, police said. In the residence, police found an English language copy of the Quran opened at a page describing martyrdom, pieces of cloth which appeared to match material wrapped around the petrol bombs and water bottles similar to those used in the fake suicide vests, police said. Luggage straps, plastic retractable craft knives and rolls of duct tape were also found.

Eighteen people have been arrested in connection with last week’s attack. All but five have been released. Searches are continuing.

Questions remain

The question remains how the men met and knew one another but police said Saturday they did not suspect a wider plot.

“It looks as if it is pretty much a contained plot involving the three of them, which is supported by the forensic evidence we’ve got back so far,” Haydon said.

Butt, who police consider the attack ringleader, had been on bail after being arrested for fraud in a case in October of last year, police said. He had also been repeatedly reported to police for violent behavior and trying to recruit young children to the Islamic State group as well as featuring in the documentary, “The Jihadis Next Door,” where he was seen next to a group of men unfurling a black-and-white flag scrawled with Arabic script and associated with the Islamic State group.

Warned by police

“There was no evidence uncovered of any attack-planning in relation to him,’ Haydon said.

Butt had been warned by police on two occasions — once for fraud in 2008 and once in 2010 for assault. Still, he did not have any criminal convictions.

Zaghba and Redouane lacked any criminal convictions or such warnings in Britain.

“From what I’m seeing, there is nothing that suggests at the moment that we got that wrong,” Haydon said, referring to Butt.

 
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Winning the French presidency was step one for Emmanuel Macron. Step two is nailing down the parliamentary majority France’s youngest-ever president needs to be effective. That happens in legislative elections that promise a monumental shake-up of the National Assembly and the consolidation of Macron’s grip on France’s levers of power.

Not only is the two-round vote, this Sunday and next, expected to install hundreds of new faces in the 577-seat lower house, but many will likely be first-time lawmakers, making good on Macron’s campaign promises to take a broom to established, old-style politics.

Half of the candidates for Macron’s fledgling Republic on the Move! party have, like him, never previously held elected office. They include an award-winning mathematician, a former female bullfighter and the ex-head of an elite French police unit that took down an Islamic State cell, among others.

With pollsters projecting a possibly dominant majority for Macron’s camp, the election could add real clout to the measured and studied air of authority the 39-year-old has cultivated in his presidential role since the very first minutes of his May 7 victory.

Much of Macron’s early muscle-flexing has been symbolic, most notably his knuckle-whitening handshake with U.S. President Donald Trump — aimed, the French leader later said, at showing that he is no pushover.

But a large, compliant majority in parliament would arm Macron with the actual power to quickly start legislating and launch his promised program of remedies for the persistent, chronic unemployment and other economic difficulties that have sapped France’s weight in Europe. He intends to speedily reform France’s labor codes, aiming to create work by injecting greater flexibility into the labor market and by boosting job-training.

Battered by the electorate that gave Macron a comfortable winning margin over far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the presidential vote, his weakened political rivals fear that another surge of support for the president’s candidates in the legislative ballot could make him almost untouchable and limit their tools and abilities to keep his ambitions and legislative program in check.

Political scientist Dominique Moisi says the legislative election is a “decisive piece” in the consolidation of Macron’s presidency. When the former banker and economy minister launched his wild-card bid for the presidential Elysee Palace in 2016, challenging the monopoly on power of France’s established parties on the left and right, his chances of winning the succession of presidential and legislative votes looked remote-to-nil. Now, Macron’s gamble is close to paying out in full, and the mainstream parties are in disarray.

“He’s on course to be a new De Gaulle if he makes the reforms he wants to,” Moisi said, referring to the hugely respected founding father of modern France, wartime hero Gen. Charles de Gaulle. “There is a risk that he will have too much authority given the fact that he has some sort of authoritarian personality in him. But that is what France needs right now.”

For Macron’s rivals, the election is their last best chance to clip his wings for the next five years until the next electoral cycle. Le Pen is hoping the record support for her National Front in the presidential vote will translate into more seats in parliament than the two held by the party in the last legislature. Similarly, far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon also is banking that his strong fourth place in the presidential ballot will help secure legislative seats for himself and his candidates.

The left and right mainstream parties, the Socialists and conservative Republicans, are hoping to limit their losses, having been spectacularly sanctioned by voters in the presidential vote. For the first time, neither of them made the decisive May runoff vote that was contested between Macron and Le Pen.

To win in the first round Sunday, candidates must win an absolute majority of votes cast and the support of at least 25 percent of registered voters in their constituency. Otherwise, the contest moves to the second-round vote the following Sunday.
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Britain was thrown into political uncertainty Friday after Labour, the main opposition party, made an extraordinary electoral comeback, denying Prime Minister Theresa May and the ruling Conservatives a majority in the House of Commons, largely due to a surge in youth voters.

In what will rank as one of the most remarkable elections in modern British history, May’s gamble to expand her party’s parliamentary majority failed spectacularly, raising doubts that she will be able to lead a minority government with the support of Northern Ireland’s Unionists.

Calls mounted from the Labour Party, the leaders of third parties and some Conservatives for the prime minister to step down.

The embattled prime minister announced from the steps of Downing Street after seeing the queen that she would start forming a government. The speech – with just a mention of the Unionists and the support they would provide her minority government – offered little recognition of the rebuff she had hours earlier received at the polls. It was a speech May could have given had she scored a big win.

“What the country needs more than ever is certainty,” she said. May claimed that as the biggest party in the House of Commons, Conservatives could provide that certainty. May said she would form a government that will take Britain out of the EU. She said her government would crack down on Islamic extremism.

May will likely face a vote of confidence in the House of Commons next week.

Despite their anger at her decision to call a snap post-Brexit referendum election and her conduct of the party’s campaign, Conservative lawmakers appeared ready in the short term to back her.

If May were to lose the Commons confidence vote, it would give Labour a chance to form a coalition of its own, or seek to govern as a minority government, although it is unclear if Labour would be able to do so.

​Calls for May to step down

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was all but written off at the start of the election campaign seven weeks ago, called on the prime minister to resign, saying she should “go and make way for a government that is truly representative of this country.” He said Labour had denied her a hard Brexit’ mandate.

“We are ready to do everything we can to put our program into operation,” he added.

Former Conservative finance minister George Osborne, removed from the Cabinet by May and now editor of the Evening Standard newspaper, told ITV, “I doubt she will survive in the long term as Conservative party leader.”

Former Conservative minister Anna Soubry said May should take responsibility for a “dreadful” campaign.

Among Conservatives there was clear fury at the result, a seismic political shock that could trigger a second election within months. Few commentators appeared to believe that a minority Conservative government is sustainable for more than a few months. “Does she really think she can blunder on?” said Lord Ashcroft, a former Liberal Democrat leader.

​Brexit not the only issue

Exit polls late Thursday, suggesting Britain was heading for a hung parliament, prompted gasps at Conservative Party headquarters in London.

May focused her party’s election campaign on Brexit, saying she would be able to bring the strength necessary to get the best deal for Britain with the European Union.

At the start of the campaign it looked as if she might pull off a landslide victory, but opinion polls showed the race tightening, and May came under criticism for running an aloof campaign that took voters for granted.

A turning point appeared to come when the parties unveiled their election manifestos. The Conservatives had to backtrack on plans to make the elderly pay more for residential and social care.

May spent more than half of the election campaign in Labour-held seats, demonstrating how confident she was of making gains from a Labour Party led by the most left-wing leader in its history, a man the press sees as a throwback to the militant 1970’s.

With more than a week to go before Brexit negotiations, it remains unclear whether Britain will have a government in place to take on the formal talks — or whether the government that starts the talks will be the one that finalizes them.

European officials and lawmakers warn that a hung parliament could be a “disaster” that hugely increases the chance of Brexit talks failing. They said political uncertainty would likely delay talks, with Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, questioning whether he would have someone to really negotiate with about Brexit.

Guy Verhofstadt, the European parliament’s Brexit representative, described the result as “yet another own goal” for Britain.

Some analysts compared the political situation to 1923, when Conservative Stanley Baldwin failed to win a parliamentary majority, struggled on for a few months as prime minister and then lost a confidence vote in the House of Commons. The king then had to ask Labour to form a minority government.

The election result also throws into doubt whether Britain will now seek the hard Brexit that May and the right-wing of her party have been advocating. There is now likely a majority across the parties in the new House of Commons for a softer Brexit, one that might see Britain remain in the single market.

“What it means is we will have pressure in the House of Commons for a soft Brexit,” said Jack Straw, a former Labour foreign minister. “The math and chemistry in the Commons will be pushing away from a hard Brexit,” he added.

Leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage complained about the election result in a tweet, saying May’s failure had put Brexit in jeopardy. Some commentators argued the election could be seen as a second referendum on Brexit, a vote about a hard’ or soft Brexit,’ certainly when it came to the youth vote.

Hundreds of thousands of people ages 18 to 34 registered to vote before last month’s closing date, including more than 450,000 on the final day. Voters ages 18 to 24 appear to have voted heavily in favor of Labour.
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