U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in Cyprus Thursday to encourage its leaders to intensify efforts to end the island's 40-year division and back threatened sanctions against Russia despite close ties.

Biden aimed to consolidate a sharp improvement in relations since the island's conservative President Nicos Anastasiades took office last year pledging to forge a "strategic partnership" after decades of Greek Cypriot distrust of Washington.

For security reasons, the U.S. vice president spent the night in the island's second city Limassol after flying in on Wednesday evening.

But the streets of the capital Nicosia were already decked out in U.S. flags ahead of his lunchtime meeting with Anastasiades at the presidential palace.

In the afternoon, Biden was to cross the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone that divides the island and its capital for talks in north Nicosia with Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu.

The breakaway state that Eroglu leads is recognized only by Turkey, whose troops occupied the island's northern third in 1974, and Biden moved swiftly on his arrival to reassure Greek Cypriots that the meeting signaled no change in U.S. policy.

Washington recognises only "one legitimate government" in Cyprus, that led by Anastasiades, he said.

"My visit and meetings throughout the island will not change that."

Biden said he wanted to lend his support to the reunification which the rival Cypriot leaders relaunched in February but said the details of a settlement were for them to work out.

He said it was "long past time... that all Cypriots are reunited in a bizonal, bicommunal federation," but added he had not come "to present or