By DPA
Nicosia : Cypriot police said Monday they had found no trace of a US embassy staff member who had been missing for four days but added that their extensive hunt would continue.
"The search will go on," a police spokesman said.
The missing man, 45-year-old Thomas Mooney, has been described as an embassy secretary. Cypriot television however broadcast photos of him in the uniform of a lieutenant colonel and diplomats from other embassies said they know him as a military attaché in the US embassy in Nicosia.
Mooney is reported to have arrived in Cyprus in June 2006 after periods in various Middle Eastern countries and in Iraq.
"We are ruling nothing out," Cypriot Justice Minister Sophoklis Sophokleous said.
The missing man has not been seen since leaving the embassy building last Thursday.
One colleague said he had been going to a fitness centre at a Nicosia hotel while another said he had intended picking up somebody at the international airport in the port city of Larnaka.
Diplomats have described the case as "mysterious".
Media reports said the search had expanded to Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus.