Cyprus Mail: News Articles in English, 01-04-19

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From: The Cyprus Mail at <http://www.cyprus-mail.com/>

Thursday, April 19, 2001

CONTENTS

[01] Treatment of gypsies could land Republic in trouble

[02] European Bank could pay for half of new hospital costs

[03] House prepares for marathon swansong

[04] Green horror at Photiades' Akamas plans

[05] Appeal launched for donors to save boy

[06] Greens slam 'miserable' response to oil spill

[07] Hotel manager killed by drunken customer in the north

[08] Plague of locusts from the north

[01] Treatment of gypsies could land Republic in trouble

THE ATTORNEY General Alecos Markides yesterday warned that Cyprus could face the European Court of Human Rights for mistreating the droves of Turkish Cypriot gypsies that have arrived from the occupied areas this spring.

A report on Mega news last night referred to international news reports and information from the Intelligence Services (KYP) that gypsies are being allegedly abused.

KYP allegedly reported two cases of abuse in the village of Emba near Paphos.

A report in the Washington Times claims Greek Cypriots treat gypsies with suspicion and hostility and incarcerate them in isolation.

According to Mega, the newspaper concluded that the Greek Cypriot mistreatment of gypsies was indicative of their deep-rooted hostility and dislike of anything Turkish.

Markides yesterday wrote letters to Justice Minister Nicos Koshis, Interior Minister Christodolos Christodoulou and Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides, stressing the danger that could face Cyprus on this issue.

He has drawn up a bill, to be presented to Parliament today, which makes the prohibition of free movement illegal.

Markides said it was fundamentally wrong to imprison anyone on suspicion of not being a Cypriot and hoped that reports suggesting a lawyer was prohibited from visiting the gypsies was untrue.

He called on the police to release anyone being held against the law immediately.

Dozens of Turkish Cypriot gypsies have been housed on abandoned Turkish Cypriot property in Paphos villages.

Others are 'living' in a section of the Nicosia central prison, while still more are camping out in tents.

Markides went on to allude to the gypsy issue as a possible public embarrassment for the country after Cyprus complained to the ECHR about mistreatment of gypsies by Turkey.

The Attorney-general, the Ministers of Justice, Foreign Affairs, Labour and the Interior, the Chief of Police and the Chief of KYP met yesterday to discuss ways to handle the gypsies without violating any laws.

The Attorney General launched an investigation in February after reports that a group of Turkish Cypriot gypsies had been beaten and dumped back in the occupied areas by Greek Cypriot police.

But Christodoulou yesterday defended the government's track record on the gypsy issue.

He said none of them were prohibited from leaving the building in which they were being held. Christodolou said, and claimed Markides agreed, that to be technically held prisoner, people must be refused permission to leave.

Christodoulou added that none of the gypsies had asked to leave the places where they are staying, but that four people identified as Turkish settlers will be prosecuted for illegal entry to the Republic of Cyprus.

House Committee on Human Rights will convene an emergency meeting this morning to discuss the gypsy question.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[02] European Bank could pay for half of new hospital costs

CYPRUS could become the first non-EU country to receive funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB) for health and education projects.

EU sources told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that applications for funding for the new Nicosia general hospital and the university campus were being considered by the EIB.

"Both projects are eligible and under examination but have not yet been approved," the source said.

Finance Minister Takis Klerdies will meet EIB president Philippe Maystadt in London at Monday's AGM of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where the two projects are expected to be discussed.

If they were approved by the EIB, Cyprus would receive some £40 million towards the erection of the hospital building and the supply of medical equipment. The total cost of the new hospital is around $80 million, some $60 for the building and $25 million for equipment. The hospital is expected to be ready within the next two years.

As part of the Cyprus application, EIB officials examined all plans for the new hospital and made their own recommendations.

EIB officials have also come to Cyprus to discuss the funding for the university campus. The talks are said to be at an advanced stage and the project is believed to fulfil all the requirements for the application to be considered.

The project is expected to take 10 years to complete, but will be carried out in stages. The EIB funding will also be dished out gradually, with the first instalment expected to be nearly £12 million.

Once approval is granted for the two projects, the loan applications could be signed as early as June. This would be the first time a non-EU country received loans for projects in the education and health sectors.

Since 1978, the EIB had given loans worth 500 million euros, almost £300 million, with most of the funding so far going to environmental and sewage projects.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[03] House prepares for marathon swansong

WHATEVER you may think of the current legislative body, it will all be water under the bridge by tonight, when the House of Representatives dissolves after a five-year term in office ahead of the May 27 Parliamentary elections.

Today's session of the Plenum is to be one of the longest ever, with 90 bills on the agenda.

The House will dissolve at the end of the session, which starts at 9am and is expected to finish around midnight with a two or three hour break in the afternoon.

The last Plenum of the current House will be marked by what is regarded as the closing of a chapter in Cyprus politics as one of the most prominent politicians since independence retires from politics for good. Sixty-nine- year-old Spyros Kyprianou, current President of the House, founder of DIKO and former President of the Republic will give a farewell speech at 5.15pm at the House today to end his 30-year-career in politics.

The most important bill that deputies are expected to adopt today is the government's National Health Scheme, a contentious plan only agreed by civil service unions and opposition parties after a series of government compromises.

Civil servants and banking staff feared they would lose out on benefits provided by their own schemes. But the government has promised they will continue to enjoy any extra benefits they receive from their current schemes.

Under the government plan, all employees will contribute two per cent of their wages to the scheme. The employer will contribute a further 2.55 per cent and 4.5 per cent will be footed by the state.

The government will not take any public contributions to the scheme until it is ready to deliver services, in approximately five years' time.

DISY, KISOS and the United Democrats support the plan as it stands, while AKEL still demands the introduction of two further changes. The main opposition party has not, however, said whether it will vote against the bill if these changes are not introduced.

DIKO opposes the plan as it stands, demanding the introduction of radical changes.

After a meeting of party leaders and representatives yesterday, Nicos Anastassiades, DISY leader and acting House president said he expected the bill would gain House approval: "It seems parties have found common ground on the matter," he said.

Kyprianou is currently acting President of the Republic as President Glafcos Clerides is on a visit to Egypt.

"We will probably have to skip some bills and some others will be summarily passed," Anastassiades said, stressing, however, that the National Health Plan would not be one of those put on hold.

Another of the bills on the agenda will, if adopted, change the way we shop.

The proposal will see shops closing at 8.30pm in the summer and 7pm in the winter on weekdays, 5pm on Saturdays in the summer and 3pm in the winter. Wednesday closing will remain at 2pm in summer and winter. Afternoon closing will be from 2-5pm in the summer, which would be defined as running from June 15 to the end of August.

Today's plenum is also expected to vote on a proposal to allow jet skis to operate without interruption from 10am to 7pm.

Deputies will also have to vote on a bunch of harmonisation bills to bring Cyprus into line with EU standards.

A proposal to give investors two years to pay out loans they took out to invest in the Cyprus Stock Exchange is likewise expected to pass through Parliament.

The new House will be elected on May 27 and convene on June 7 to elect its new president. But the new legislative body is not expected to start work before September.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[04] Green horror at Photiades' Akamas plans

ENVIRONMENTALISTS yesterday reacted with horror to businessman Photos Photiades' ambitious plans for turning his Akamas land into a massive tourism complex. Photiades is the only Akamas landowner to whom the Cabinet plans to give unrestricted development rights.

As revealed by the Cyprus Mail yesterday, a brochure put out by Photiades proposes putting three hotels, an 18-hole golf course, a marina, an artificial lagoon, conference facilities, villas, an electric train service, a health spa, a sports centre, museums, shops and beach cabins on his 1.5 square kilometre coastal plot near the tip of the unspoilt peninsula.

The plan also provides for a 'Temple to Aphrodite' and an amphitheatre where ancient Greek festivals would be re-enacted. Taking part in these performances, according to the brochure, would be "pure virgin, airy, girls, in the nude, to frame the temple in a splendid tableau".

The pamphlet eulogises at length about the natural beauty of the Akamas and makes repeated promises that the 22 separate developments planned for the plot would not impinge on the local ecology "in any way".

But conservationists, who see preserving Akamas as their cause célebre, are not convinced by Photiades' green speak.

"The plans are ridiculous, to say the least," a spokesman for Greenpeace told the Mail. "The tragic irony is that the whole thing is being presented as if it would bring positive results."

The international environmental pressure group has been at the forefront of efforts to block tourism development on the remote peninsula, with its dramatic scenery, rare flora and turtle-nesting beaches.

The Cyprus Conservation Foundation (CCF), which has spearheaded projects to promote eco-sensitive tourism on the peninsula, dismissed Photiades' ideas as fundamentally flawed. "It is the wrong vision altogether for any part of Cyprus, let alone Akamas," a CCF spokeswoman said.

She spoke of the "unacceptably enormous" scale of the proposed development and suggested the type of Hellenic culture theme park envisioned by the businessman was passé.

"European conventions have gone so far as to express concern for the whole concept of the theme park and the trivialisation of heritage. Reading Mr Photiades' brochure, this is exactly the feeling you get: that 9,000 years of cultural heritage is being trivialised to prepare a make-believe backdrop for pampering the rich."

"The last thing we need is to destroy what authentic beauty has been left in order to create poor copies of the original," the CCF spokeswoman said.

The worst thing for greens is that the government appears set to sanction Photiades' plans, or some version thereof.

The government, under pressure from greens, has repeatedly vowed to preserve the remote peninsula as a national park. But the latest Cabinet plan for Akamas provides for Photiades' plot of land at Fontana Amorosa, near the tip of the peninsula, being swapped for a smaller plot just beyond the Baths of Aphrodite on the peninsula's north coast. The businessman, alone among Akamas landowners, would then be granted free rein to develop this new plot.

"It is really quite depressing," the Greenpeace spokesman said. "If this Photiades plan is realised, then 12 years of campaigning to save Akamas will have been for nothing."

Greenpeace repeated what Euro-MPs stated during the joint EU-Cyprus parliamentary committee session in Limassol last month: that a failure to protect Akamas could scupper the island's EU-accession course.

"It is very clearly a similar case to that of Norway and whaling. Norway could not join Europe largely because she refused to stop killing whales and, in a similar way, Cyprus could loose out if she fails to preserve Akamas," the Greenpeace spokesman said.

The EU-Cyprus parliamentarians approved a resolution calling on the government to adopt World Bank recommendations that the Akamas be preserved as a wilderness with tourism development limited to within existing village boundaries.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[05] Appeal launched for donors to save boy

VOLUNTEERS yesterday began giving blood in an effort to find a donor for a three-year-old boy suffering from a rare bone marrow disorder.

Sofoclis Frangou's parents started worrying seven months ago when they noticed that he was continuously pale. They took him to a paediatrician and after a series of tests, it was discovered Sofoclis had a low red blood cell count.

After four months of tests at the Paediatric Ward of Nicosia's Makarios Hospital, Sofoclis was diagnosed with a rare bone marrow disorder. He was then sent to Israel to undergo further tests, where doctors confirmed the diagnosis.

The rare disease is usually diagnosed in older people, and Sofoclis is the first child in the world to be diagnosed with the disorder.

The Karaskakio Transplant Centre in Nicosia yesterday confirmed this was the first case reported in Cyprus.

Relatives have all given blood but no suitable donor was found, the closest match being his father, originally from Dikomo in the occupied north. His father is pleading to people from Dikomo to come forward, as the chances of finding a donor amongst them are higher.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[06] Greens slam 'miserable' response to oil spill

THE GREEN Party yesterday slammed the government for taking four whole days to clean up a small oil slick that leaked from a Maltese-flagged freighter in Larnaca harbour on Saturday.

"The recent polluting of the sea and Larnaca's beaches has shown the deficiency and weakness of the government," said the Green statement.

Characterising the response as "miserable", the Greens pointed out that it had taken the authorities four days to clean up single barrel of oil leaking in Larnaca harbour. "God help us if they had had to deal with a whole tanker," the statement added.

On Tuesday, Agriculture Minister Costas Themistocleous sought to play down the seriousness of the spill, saying the spill had been easily contained.

From Larnaca harbour, the oil floated eastwards, reaching beaches in the Oroklini-Pyla area on Easter Sunday. Cleanup efforts at the beach, however, did not get under way until Tuesday, after the holiday was over.

Themistocleous claimed on Tuesday that most of the escaping oil had been contained on Saturday: "The spill in the harbour on Saturday was cleaned up totally, but some appears to have escaped to was up in the Oroklini and Pyla area."

The Greens yesterday charged the minister with complacency, saying the greatest problem was the fact Themistocleous felt there was no problem.

Fisheries Department official Loizos Loizides said on Tuesday the captain of the ship, Strofades II, had been fined £5,000 for polluting the seas and would also be billed for the entire cost of the clean-up operation, an additional £1,000. Loizides said the captain had admitted responsibility.

Yesterday's statement from the Greens also condemned the government's efforts on other issues, such as firefighting, alleging that it "carried on its path of irresponsibility and thoughtlessness" even after last summer's devastating blazes.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[07] Hotel manager killed by drunken customer in the north

THE GENERAL manager of the Palm Beach hotel in occupied Famagusta was shot and killed outside the premises in a row with a drunken customer, Turkish Cypriot papers reported yesterday.

Levent Soykut, 43, a former 'Undersecretary for Youth and Sport', was standing in front of the hotel on Tuesday morning when he was shot by Mahmut Yucetas, who had started an argument with hotel staff over where to park his car.

When he was told to move the vehicle, Yucetas refused and asked to see the manager. Soykut was summoned to the scene and the suspect then began to argue with him.

Soykut then turned to go back into the hotel and Yucetas allegedly shot him. Press reports said the suspect was drunk. He was arrested immediately and remanded in custody for three days. One paper said Yucetas had been drinking after he had lost a lot of money in the hotel's casino.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[08] Plague of locusts from the north

A PLAGUE of locusts from the occupied areas is causing considerable damage to crops in the Avgorou area, local farmers charge, and government farming officers were yesterday out dousing the offending insects with poison.

Avgorou villagers say the locust swarms that have been ravaging their cereals and other crops since Saturday descended from the occupied areas. The infested fields, within the British base of Dhekelia, are a stone's throw away from the occupied areas.

The mukhtar of Avgorou, Flourentzos Koutas, said this was the first time since 1974 that locusts had arrived from the north.

Famagusta District Agricultural officer, Pambos Rodosthenous, did not comment on the possible source area for the insects, saying only that it was the time of year for locust outbreaks. He also said that the insects had, luckily, been caught before they changed into their winged form and spread further. "Locusts hatch in March and luckily we have caught them at the first stage, where they only walk and do not fly, though they can still cover quite an area," Rodosthenous said.

The spraying campaign focused on fields around the Ayios Kentheas monastery and extended into the dividing zone, with Turkish soldiers watching from their sentry posts.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

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