Cyprus said Tuesday that it will not attend UN-led peace negotiations scheduled for this week in protest over Turkish moves to undermine the divided island's search for energy.

Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and his Turkish Cypriot counterpart Dervis Eroglu had been due to meet Thursday morning inside the UN-controlled buffer zone in Nicosia.

But after Anastasiades, president of the internationally recognised Republic of Cyprus, met party leaders Tuesday it was announced that he had decided against attending any peace talks for the time being.

"The Council of Leaders accepted the (president's) recommendation... to suspend meetings of himself and his negotiator with the Turkish Cypriot side," government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides told reporters.

He did not clarify whether the process would be put on hold indefinitely, only saying that Nicosia was taking "legal and diplomatic" steps against Turkey's "hostile action" in Cyprus's exclusive economic zone.

"Turkey's actions constitute a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of Cyprus and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, while undermining the security, stability and peace in the region," said Christodoulides.

Cyprus expects its EU partners and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to "respond" to Turkey's actions, the spokesman added.

Nicosia is unhappy that Ankara is determined to search for oil and gas in the same region where the government has already licensed exploratory drills in its exclusive economic zone.

Turkish troops invaded and occupied the northern third of Cyprus in 1974 in response to an Athens-engineered coup aimed at uniting it with Greece.

Ankara opposes the Cypriot government's exploitation of offshore hydrocarbon reserves before there is any peace deal.

Greek Cypriots say the lack of a settlement should not put everything on hold.

- Peace 'efforts not sincere' -

In remarks picked up by the Cyprus News Agency, Eroglu said the Greek Cypriot decision not to attend Thursday's meeting showed once again that "their efforts to find a solution through the talks are not sincere".

"The decision to suspend negotiations on the grounds of violating the sovereign rights of the Cyprus republic is incompatible with the realities of the Cyprus problem and is a new expression of their determination to ignore the rights of the Turkish Cypriot people," Eroglu was quoted as saying.

The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognised only by Turkey, argues that its people should be allowed a share of the island's natural resources.

The United Nations said it had been informed of the Greek Cypriot side's decision to suspend talks.

But it added that UN envoy Espen Barth Eide "will hold meetings with both leaders, their negotiators, leaders of political parties as well as with several other key interlocutors, discussing the way forward in the negotiations".

Italian-Korean energy consortium ENI-Kogas began deep sea drilling off Cyprus for possible gas last month in a second block to undergo exploratory tests since the first find in 2011.

US firm Noble Energy made the first find in the Aphrodite field, which is estimated to contain 102 billion to 170 billion cubic metres (3.6 trillion to six trillion cubic feet) of gas.

Government officials in Nicosia say Ankara, which does not recognise the zone, has announced that a Turkish seismic vessel would carry out a survey in the same area as ENI-Kogas's platform from mid-October.

"For the talks to produce results they cannot be conducted under such types of provocation," Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides said Monday.

"The government is treating this development as very serious, perhaps it's the most serious since demarcation of the exclusive economic zone".

Ankara has also threatened to boycott energy firms operating off Cyprus, while in the past Nicosia accused it of "gunboat diplomacy" by harassing international ships involved.

In Athens, the foreign ministry said it summoned Turkey's ambassador Kerim Uras in protest against it sending the seismic ship and "tensions caused by Turkish actions in the region."

burs/al/kir