(NICOSIA) - A top aide to President Demetris Christofias on Monday bemoaned the lack of progress or EU involvement in the UN-supervised peace talks on the divided island of Cyprus.

George Iacovou, the Greek Cypriot leader's chief adviser in the negotiations with the Turkish Cypriots, saw little hope for fully fledged reunification talks before September -- more than two months later than initially planned.

"We say at this point in time, no progress has really been made in the working groups," Iacovou told a small group of journalists.

"Therefore we should keep trying, and I would guess that there will be fully fledged negotiations after the summer," said Iacovou, a former former minister.

Christofias and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat are due to hold their next meeting on July 1 to assess progress in the preparatory talks at the level of technical committees.

Despite an agreement they reached on March 21, when a target of June 21 was set for full negotiations, the two leaders have yet to decide on when to launch a fresh initiative to end the more than three-decade-old division.

In the key working groups of security, territory and property, "very little progress has been made, if any," Iacovou said, while the negotiators had "done some good work" on governance, the economy and EU-related issues.

The Greek Cypriot official, whose country has been an EU member since May 2004, appealed for greater European Union involvement in the process.

"We want very much Brussels to be involved but Turkey is not happy with Brussels to be involved. The Turks want the UN to be involved because they think they can get a better deal," he argued.

"We find it very strange the EU is present everywhere in the Middle East, in Darfur, solving problems in the Congo Lakes, and here they only surface as experts," said Iacovou.

However, he also cautioned against efforts to speed up the process. "It is wrong to press for instant results on difficult questions," the president's adviser said.

In March the two leaders reached a landmark agreement to enter full peace talks after four years of virtual stalemate following the 2004 rejection by Greek Cypriots of a UN reunification blueprint.

Both sides say the going has been sluggish.

The Greek Cypriots are adamant that real progress at the committee stage must be achieved if face-to-face talks are to have any chance of success, while the Turkish Cypriots say any difficulties can be resolved at the peace table.

The island has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup seeking enosis, or union with Greece.

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