The Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Rauf Denktash, said yesterday the European Union's decision to start membership negotiations with Cyprus meant the end of intercommunal talks on the divided island.
"The intercommunal talks have died and, under these conditions, a federation is not on the agenda," a statement from his office quoted Mr Denktash as saying.
The United Nations has promoted the talks with the aim of building confidence between the estranged Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities towards creating a bizonal, bicommunal federation on the island.
Mr Denktash said he would no longer discuss the subject of intercommunal talks with the United Nations.
The Turkish Cypriot leader is due to meet Mr Gustave Feissel, the UN resident representative in Cyprus, on Tuesday.
UN officials are pushing for the resumption of intercommunal talks on the island in March, after two inconclusive rounds earlier this year.
European leaders issued a formal invitation to Cyprus and 10 eastern and central European states to start talks on joining the EU at a summit in Luxembourg at the weekend.
Mr Denktash, president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognised only by Turkey, said the EU's representative on the island should no longer disturb his officials.
"Those who recognise our state can come and talk to us," he said.
Turkish troops invaded the northern third of Cyprus in 1974 in response to a Greek Cypriot coup aimed at unifying the island with Greece and backed by the military then ruling in Athens.
The communities have been divided since inter-ethnic fighting in 1963.
"This is the last manoeuvre by the Greek and Greek Cypriot administrations who have been trying to make the Turks of Cyprus wear the shirt of a minority for the last 34 years," Mr Denktash was quoted as saying by Turkey's Anatolian news agency.
The Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Mesut Yilmaz, reeling over Turkey's exclusion from EU membership talks, on Sunday reiterated a warning that Ankara would begin work on integrating northern Cyprus into Turkey if the EU began membership talks with the Cypriot government as planned in March.
The Cypriot Foreign Minister, Mr Ioannis Cassoulides, said Turkey should accept the EU's invitation to participate in a conference on enlargement.
"If Turkey accepts European values and beliefs, that can be the framework within which the Cyprus problem can be solved," he told a news conference.
"Simultaneously, relations of friendship and good neighbourly relations, after a solution to the Cyprus problem, can be extended to Turkey from Greece and Cyprus," he said.
The EU called on Turkey to move to solve long-standing territorial disputes with Greece, including the future of Cyprus, improve its human rights record, and protect the rights of its Kurdish minority.
After the decision, Mr Yilmaz said Turkey would not hold talks with the EU on Cyprus, Greece or other key issues, although bilateral relations with member states would continue.