NICOSIA – Turkish-Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar – who has rejected any idea of reunifying the island split after unlawful Turkish invasions in 1974 – said he didn’t refuse to take part in United Nations sponsored talks, but that he wasn’t asked.

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides told an audience that he had been “sounded out” for talks hosted by the United Nations in New York on August 13 with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Tatar.

“My response was positive and I hope – we haven’t been informed yet – for the same response from the Turkish side and the meeting to lead to positive results,” Christodoulides said, reported Reuters.

But Tatar said he had not received an invitation and accused Christodoulides of trying to muddy the waters. “There is no invitation from the UN Secretary-General … for a tripartite meeting. In any case, under the current conditions, we would not approve a tripartite meeting. There is no basis for such a meeting,” he said.

The UN has been trying to find common ground for the resumption of long-stalled talks between rival Greek and Turkish-Cypriot communities in a conflict spanning decades, a major source of tension between Greece and Turkey.

Christodoulides said any possible refusal from Tatar to meet would be a “disservice” to Turkish-Cypriots but Tatar didn’t say if he would have accepted the invitation anyway as he said he won’t even talk about reunification.

Instead, he wants the UN and world to recognize the isolated Turkish-Cypriot occupied northern third of the island that’s been that way for 50 years, unaccepted as legitimate by any country other than Turkey.

A UN spokesperson in Cyprus referred queries to UN headquarters in New York, where there was no immediate response to a Reuters request for a comment about the brewing brouhaha that has complicated the dilemma.

Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup. The seeds of division were sown earlier when a power-sharing administration crumbled and violence prompted the dispatch of a peacekeeping force along the dividing so-called Green Line.

Peace talks collapsed in July, 2017 at the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana when then Turkish-Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a 35,000-strong army would never leave the occupied side and demanded the right of further military intervention.

(Material from the Associated Press was used in this report)