NICOSIA, Cyprus -- When you cross the "green line" between the Cypriot and Turkish-occupied parts of the city, you enter a zone that has frozen in time since war stopped on this eastern Mediterranean island 27 years ago.
The Ledra Palace Hotel, with its handsome blond sandstone, is pocked with bullet holes, and coils of rusty barbed wire are strung atop the old city walls. Windows are missing. A shot-up residence has been abandoned. Blue-capped United Nations troops patrol the zone.
The situation has achieved an equilibrium since Turkey occupied half of this island after Greece supported a coup that overthrew the Cypriot government in 1974. In the border zone, a T-shirt shop sells to Czech and German tourists who make day trips to occupied Nicosia. And the Ledra hotel has been reclaimed as low-budget apartments: Laundry hangs out to dry on the balconies.