Turkey donated $100,000 to a Turkish and Greek Cypriot joint committee, working to locate people who had suspiciously disappeared in the 1960s, when ethnic tension in the divided island was running high.

Turkish Ambassador in Lefkoşa (Nicosia) Derya Kanbay yesterday handed over the $100,000 check to Gülden Plümer Küçük, a Turkish Cypriot member of the "Missing Persons Committee," founded by the island's two communities in 1981.

A large number of people went missing in the 1960s, due to abductions and extrajudicial killings, as tensions between Turkish and Greek Cypriots escalated.

Although the Turkish military intervention in 1974 succeeded in stopping the killings, the burial sites of those missing still remain unclear.

With a total 0f 1,508 Greek Cypriots and 493 Turkish Cypriots remain missing as yet; the committee's work has so far helped the identification of bodies of 563 Greek and 184 Turkish Cypriots.