Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos is holding a slim lead over communist rival Demetris Christofias who is gaining support among voters ahead of February's election for president, a poll showed on Sunday.
Papadopoulos slipped 0.3 points to 29.8 percent as opposed to Christofias climbing 1.1 points to 29.5 percent, the Noverna survey published in the Politis daily said.
Independent candidate Ioannis Kassoulides was in third place with 27.3 percent, the survey said. If candidates fail to win an outright majority in the February 17 election, as polls suggest, a runoff will be staged between the two frontrunners on February 24.
A runoff between Papadopoulos and Christofias would see both getting 39.2 percent of the vote, while a face-off between Kassoulides and Papadopoulos would see Papadopoulos win with 45 percent, the poll said.
Papadopoulos, 73, led his Greek Cypriot community into rejecting a UN reunification plan for Cyprus a week before the island joined the European Union as a divided country in 2004. Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief coup mounted by Greek Cypriot extremists backed by the junta then ruling Greece.
Challengers accuse Papadopoulos of not doing enough to try to ease the deadlock in reunification talks, which is complicating Turkey's bid to join the European Union. Christofias, who heads the island's AKEL communist party, quit as the senior partner in the governing alliance in mid-2007.
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