Excavations are being carried out at seven locations across Cyprus in search of people who went missing during intercommunal conflicts between 1963 and 1974, House refugees committee chairman and Akel MP Nikos Kettiros said on Tuesday.

“Currently, excavations are taking place in Lefkoniko, in the botanical gardens in Kyrenia, in Templos, in Mora, in Pileri, in Karavas, and in wells in Strovolos,” he told the committee, before adding that “the next excavation will be in Ayios Ermolaos.

Lefkoniko is located in the Famagusta district on the Mesaoria plain, Templos is west of Kyrenia, Mora is near Ercan (Tymbou) airport, Pileri is on the south side of the Kyrenia mountains northwest of Nicosia, Karavas is west of Kyrenia, and Strovolos is a suburb in the southwest of Nicosia.

Ayios Ermolaos is also located on the south side of the Kyrenia mountains, further west than Pileri.

Kettiros also said that a “major problem” facing the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) is that “the occupying army only gives ten permits per year for excavations with a radius of 25 metres each” in the north.

“These are the issues which must be raised as confidence-building measures: to increase the number of permits, to increase the radii in which excavations are carried out for both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot missing persons,” he said.

On this matter, he said letters will be sent on behalf of the committee to both the Council of the European Union – over which Cyprus is set to preside for six months from January – and to House president Annita Demetriou.

During Cyprus’ six-month term as the Council of the EU’s rotating president, he said, a “conference or a meeting” of his committee will be organised “in the presence of the relatives” of the missing, so as to “inform the foreign guests who will be in Cyprus”.

“It cannot be acceptable to any person that our dead are buried under rubbish. No one can provide arguments for this situation that the occupying army has been perpetuating for 51 years,” he said.

Diko MP Zacharias Koulias, meanwhile, said that “we must, as the Republic, change course and stand against Turkey”.

“Now that the Republic of Cyprus is presiding over the European Union, we [should] change our stance and denounce Turkey at every step. Turkey must be denounced daily in all forums where we have a say as the Republic of Cyprus for the unacceptability of its behaviour,” he said.

The CMP was first established in 1981 and became operational in 2006, setting out to locate and identify a total of 2,002 people who went missing during Cyprus’ intercommunal conflicts.

As of November 30 this year, it has exhumed 1,713 bodies and identified the remains of 1,058 people from the official list, as well as 216 others.

Of those identified, 296 were Turkish Cypriots and 762 were Greek Cypriots.

So far this year, the remains of 22 people have been found, with seven of them having been identified. Six of those were Greek Cypriots and the other was a Turkish Cypriot.

Former CMP third member Paul-Henri Arni said last year that Cyprus has the “second-best results in the world” in its search for missing persons.