Natural gas discoveries in offshore Cyprus should contribute to the ongoing peace talks to find a resolution to the decades-old conflict in the island, a U.S. energy official said Saturday.
Newly discovered energy resources have changed the rules of the game in the region, Amos J. Hochstein, deputy undersecretary for energy diplomacy at the U.S. State Department, told Greek Ethnos newspaper.
He stressed that there exists a considerable amount of hydrocarbon reservoir fields which have not been confirmed yet, but both the sides in Cyprus and neighboring countries have big expectations on them.
"Hydrocarbon reservoirs are not bounded by political boundaries, therefore it is important that the countries in the region need to work together to use these transboundary resources in a cooperative manner instead of fueling confrontations," he said.
Cyprus has remained divided into Greek and Turkish parts since a Greek Cypriot coup was followed by a Turkish peace mission to aid Turkish Cypriots in the north in 1974.
The Cyprus peace talks, which had stalled in January 2012, resumed in February, with the distribution of the gas found in Aphrodite being among the negotiations' most important topics.
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