High security for Cyprus meeting

Dentkash will travel through a U.N. controlled buffer zone to the meeting

NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash is visiting the southern Greek sector of the divided island of Cyprus for the first time in decades on Saturday.

Security will be tight in Nicosia for the visit of the veteran leader, who is highly unpopular among many Greek Cypriots.

Newspaper reports on the island said hundreds of police are to be deployed along the six kilometre route Denktash is to take by car from north Nicosia, across a U.N.-controlled buffer zone, to President Glafcos Clerides's residence on the southern edge of the capital.

Greek Cypriot refugees held demonstrations ahead of the visit.

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"The Denktash visit is a betrayal while 200,000 Greek Cypriot refugees are not allowed to return to their occupied homes in the north and Turkey refuses to account for 1,600 Greek Cypriots who went missing in the north in the wake of the invasion," Aris Hajipanayiotou, the leader of the Cyprus Anti-Occupation Movement, told a small rally.

A group of about 100 elderly Greek Cypriot women dressed in mourning black and carrying large photographs of missing sons and husbands applauded Hadjipanayiotou. They said they will continue to demonstrate outside Clerides' home during the dinner later on Saturday.

"We want Denktash to see us so that he may at last relent and agree to assist in determining the fate of our loved ones after 28 years," Harita Mandoles, one of the protesters, told the Associated Press.

Other Greek Cypriot opposition parties, refugees and student groups are also planning what organisers described as peaceful demonstrations to coincide with the dinner.

Government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou said the missing and other humanitarian issues will be raised by Clerides during the dinner. He appealed to demonstrators to keep their protests peaceful

Denktash heads a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state recognised only by Ankara.

The two leaders are to start talks in mid-January to try to resolve the decades-old division of Cyprus, a frontrunner for European Union membership in the next wave of enlargement.

The dinner is to reciprocate for a meal Denktash hosted on December 5, when Clerides made an unprecedented visit to northern Cyprus, a no-go area for Greek Cypriots.

He was welcomed in the north by Turkish Cypriot women releasing doves.

Cyprus has been effectively partitioned since Turkish forces invaded its north in 1974 in response to a brief Greek-inspired coup engineered by the military then ruling Greece.

Cyprus's hopes of joining the EU have led to added urgency in attempts to find a settlement to a major source of tension between NATO allies Greece and Turkey.

Cyprus can still join the bloc without a settlement, though Turkey says it could "annex" the north of the island if that happens.