The Greek foreign minister, Theodoros Pangalos, has accused the United States of obscuring the issues behind the conflict on the divided island of Cyprus.

Mr Pangalos said that America was trying to persuade international public opinion to focus on the planned deployment by the Cyprus government of Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles.

In a BBC interview he dismissed as nonsense reports of a rift between Athens and Nicosia over the missiles, but he did not say whether these would be installed in Cyprus as originally planned.