Athens/Nicosia - Leaders seeking a solution to reunify the divided Mediterranean island of Cyprus tackled "thorny" issues on Tuesday in the latest round of UN-sponsored peace talks, officials said.

"The talks took place in a positive climate but focused on a number of thorny issues," said Alexander Downer, a former Australian foreign minister and UN special envoy to the talks.

He said the 13th meeting between Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Mehmet Ali Talat would take place on December 22.

Athens/Nicosia - Hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of former hardline Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulos in Nicosia on Monday.

Family, friends and politicians, among them Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis and main Greek opposition leader Giorgos Papandreou paid their last respects to Papadopoulos at a service at Saint Sophia cathedral.

Papadopoulos, who led his community to reject a United Nations peace plan to reunite the divided island of Cyprus, died following a long battle with cancer on December
12. He was 74.

Nicosia, Dec. 13 : Moussa Maarafi, a member of the Kuwaiti Supreme Petroleum Council, has said that the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) at its meeting in Algeria next week should take a decision to cut oil production by two million barrels a day (b/d).

Maarafi added that the oil cartel needs to set up a new mechanism to control oil markets if it wants to raise oil prices to 75 dollars a barrel and stressed the need for coordination among all the members of the organisation.

OPEC should now rethink its policy, he said, taking into account the interests of both producers and consumers. He also stressed that OPEC and Russia, the world's biggest non-OPEC producer, should coordinate their moves.

Nicosia  - Former hardline Cypriot president Tassos Papadopoulos died following a long battle with cancer on Friday, radio reports said. He was 74.

Born Tassos Nikolaou Papadopoulos in 1934 in Nicosia and educated as a lawyer after studying law at King's College in London, he served as the President of the Republic of Cyprus from 2003 to 2008.

Nicosia - Initial optimism from earlier this year that one of the world's most unmanageable conflicts might finally be solved has waned in Cyprus as peace talks failed to produce a breakthrough in 2008.

The only tangible outcome following the weekly meetings between Greek Cypriot President Dimitris Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat has been the realization that a long road still lies ahead of any breakthrough, despite the enthusiasm that greeted a new round peace talks in September following a four-year stalemate.

Nicosia - Seven refugees from Pakistan were injured over night in a explosion in a minefield in the buffer zone between Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus and the Greek Cypriot south, local media reported Friday.

One person was in serious condition, according to the southern Cyprus state radio citing medical personnel at a hospital in the port city of Larnaka.

Another 13 refugees managed to cross the minefield unscathed to reach the Greek Cypriot side of the island.

The refugees said they had arrived in northern Cyprus by ferry from Syria and wanted to enter the European Union via southern Cyprus. The southern half of the island has been an EU member since 2004.