Cyprus Mail: News Articles in English, 01-06-19

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

Tuesday, June 19, 2001

CONTENTS

[01] Enlarged National Council doesn't fit in Clerides' office

[02] Development bank bosses seek to reassure staff as strike gets under way

[03] CY submits new Olympic bid

[04] Health campaigners berate smoking ministers

[05] Police seek two men over murder of Russian businessman

[06] Turks back down on plan to turn Armenian monastery into hotel

[07] One in five are diabetics

[08] Autopsy confirms woman died in accident

[01] Enlarged National Council doesn't fit in Clerides' office

THE NATIONAL Council yesterday convened for the first time in its new enlarged format with 22 members, including representatives of the eight parties elected to Parliament in the May 27 elections.

But President Glafcos Clerides' office in the Presidential Palace was too small to host all the members of the National Council, so the meeting was held in the sitting room.

After the four-hour meeting, Government Spokesman Michalis Papapetrou said the President's top advisory body on the Cyprus issue had discussed developments in the effort to reach a settlement on the island as well as the Republic's course for European Union accession.

The National Council addressed Turkish threats of an 'unlimited' reaction if Cyprus joined the EU before a settlement.

And in view of its increased membership, the National Council also examined issues relating to how the body would operate.

Each party represented in the House is entitled to take part in the National Council with its leader and one or two other members.

The National Council also includes Under-secretary to the President Pantelis Kouros, Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides and former President of the Republic and the House Spyros Kyprianou.

The last National Council had 15 members while the current one has 22.

Left-wing AKEL, right-wing DISY, centre-right DIKO, the Social Democrats and the United Democrats were the only parties represented in the National Council until now. However, New Horizons, ADIK, and the Greens managed to secure one seat each at the elections, giving them the right to take part in the Council's deliberations.

Kyprianou, who was last week diagnosed with malignant pelvic and lung cancer attended the meeting on a wheelchair and left at 11.30 am, two hours before discussions finished.

Asked how he was doing, Kyprianou, who has started therapy to treat his cancer, vowed: "With God's help and the support of you and the people I will beat this disease."

The National Council will reconvene next Tuesday.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[02] Development bank bosses seek to reassure staff as strike gets under way

DEVELOPMENT Bank employees went on indefinite strike yesterday in protest at a government decision to sell off a chunk of their bank without briefing them about the terms of the agreement.

The employees, members of bank workers union ETYK, had already stayed away from work last Wednesday and Thursday.

ETYK complains that Development Bank bosses have kept its members in the dark over a deal to sell 38 per cent of the bank's share capital to Greece's Piraeus Bank. The government announced the deal in late April. The agreement with Piraeus Bank will cut the government's stake in the Development Bank from 88 per cent to 45 per cent.

"We demand to be immediately briefed about the content of the deal," ETYK secretary-general Loizos Hadjicostis said yesterday.

"The deal provides that the Bank's staff will get five per cent of the shares. But we don't want this matter to be handled by the new board of directors, which will mainly consist of Piraeus Bank representatives. We want to have a meeting with the government side to deal with this," the ETYK chief said.

In an effort to ease tension, Ioannis Strogylos, President of Development Bank's Council, yesterday reassured the bank's employees that they would be briefed about the agreement after a meeting of the Council on July 25.

Strogylos also pledged to arrange a meeting between him, the employees and Finance Minister Takis Klerides to address the situation.

Meanwhile House Finance Committee chairman Marcos Kyprianou of DIKO clarified yesterday that the legislative body could not interfere in the debate as the Development Bank was a private company.

"We don't have a say in the Bank's activities. The bank in question is a private company with the state as its main shareholder," said Kyprianou.

"But what the Finance Committee can do is to table the matter for discussion in its meeting with the Finance Minister next Monday to examine weather the right procedures have been followed to reach the deal with the Piraeus Bank," he suggested.

Finance Minister Takis Klerides has said there was "complete openness" about the deal. "All details have been given to parliament and to the media. Everything about the deal has been written in the papers," the minister said last Wednesday.

The buy-up will cost the Piraeus Bank group some £27.9 million for 37.87 per cent of the Development Bank's share capital. The agreement with the government also provides for the Development Bank's floatation on the stock market in Cyprus, Greece or elsewhere.

The Development Bank has always been limited to investment activity but the Central Bank recently granted the institution license to expand its operations into all aspects of banking.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[03] CY submits new Olympic bid

CYPRUS Airways (CY) yesterday confirmed that it had submitted the final details of its bid to purchase a 51 per cent stake in the flagging Greek carrier Olympic.

The deadline was yesterday afternoon, but the paperwork had already arrived in London at the investment bank handling the deal, Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), by the morning.

With Olympic over £100 million in debt, dogged by labour disputes and mismanagement, the Greek government is desperate to sell up.

The airline has made a profit just once in the last 20 years and EU regulations prevent Athens from bailing the company out with yet more injections of cash.

The Greek government held back from choosing a buyer in May because three initial bids were deemed unsatisfactory.

CY and two other bidders were asked to improve their offers, before any kind of deal could get off the ground.

The CY team, headed by chairman Haris Loizides, is due to fly to London to answer final queries from CSFB on Friday.

CY spokesman Tassos Angelis said the revised details related to the operation of Olympic under a CY consortium and to certain financial issues.

Unconfirmed reports claimed that the company, considered a frontrunner in the race to win the deal, had failed to pay the £1.8 million deposit to secure its bid in May.

There is also thought to be some friction over CY's offer to buy just 51 per cent of the company, given that the Greek government wants to offload a majority shareholding of at least 60 per cent.

But Angelis confirmed that the 51 per cent offer had yesterday been re- submitted without change.

CY chairman Haris Loizides wants 30 per cent of Olympic directly controlled by CY and its unidentified consortium partners.

Flight routes would be redefined, and overseas officers merged. Loizides hopes a larger group would be able to negotiate better fuel prices.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[04] Health campaigners berate smoking ministers

THE CYPRUS Anti-Cancer Society yesterday poured scorn on the government's efforts to clamp down on the nation's heavy smoking habits, by pointing out how many men of influence had failed to quit the nicotine habit.

A statement issued by the Non-Smokers' League, which is affiliated to the Society, ridiculed the three Ministers and corresponding Presidents of the House Committees directly responsible for those they deem the most impressionable: national guardsmen, children and students.

Health Minister Frixos Savvides, Defence Minister Socrates Hasikos and Education Minister Ouranios Ioannides are all smokers.

So are the Presidents of the House Committees responsible for Health, Defence and Education, Antonis Karas, Yiannakis Omirou and Prodromos Prodromou.

"We welcome the decision to face the smoking problem in an organised way. Not just with words, but by placing people in strategic positions, who will put themselves forward as examples to be copied by national guardsmen, children and students," the statement read.

The Health Minister took advantage of international no-smoking day on May 31 to announce the increasing number of deaths from passive smoking and herald the introduction of tough new EU laws that would lessen the smoking bug in Cyprus.

But in a follow-up interview with the Cyprus Mail, the ministry's permanent secretary Symeon Matsis conceded that the new laws on tobacco advertising would be delayed and less strict after a European Court deemed the initial EU directive illegal.

Frixos Savvides has fallen by the wayside in his promise to give up smoking if DIKO deputy Marios Matsakis curbed his outspoken comments in the media.

Between 70 and 120 Cypriots are thought to die from the effects of passive smoking every year.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[05] Police seek two men over murder of Russian businessman

POLICE were yesterday looking for two men in connection with the murder of a Russian businessman whose body washed up on a beach in the Akamas on Saturday afternoon.

Investigators said yesterday they had evidence that two men, thought to be Russian, were involved with the gruesome murder.

The evidence, however, was not enough to identify the two suspects.

Police believe the men may have already left the island.

Fifty-six-year-old Valeri Popov's body was found by chance at Lara beach in the Akamas on Saturday.

He was bound and gagged.

An autopsy showed that the victim had been bound and gagged and then thrown into the sea, where he drowned.

Popov had been a permanent resident of Cyprus for the past few years.

He was living in Larnaca.

The victim's son said that on the day he disappeared he had told him he was meeting with two people.

Police said they would contact their counterparts in Russia in an effort to shed further light on the case.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[06] Turks back down on plan to turn Armenian monastery into hotel

In 1997, the occupation regime leased Saint Magar Monastery, at Halevka in the Kyrenia range, to a developer who wants to convert it into a tourism complex. But a strong reaction from the Armenian lobby at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has now made the occupation authorities think again, Kibris reported.

The CoE parliamentary assembly apparently invited the chairman of the occupation regime's 'assembly', Ertugrul Hasipoglu, to Strasbourg to discuss the fate of the Armenian monastery. The invitation came after a complaint about the planned monastery development was lodged by the Cyprus government, Kibris reported.

After the Strasbourg meeting, Hasipoglou said he had defended the occupation regime's right to use the Armenian Monastery as it saw fit. However, the lease of the monastery to businessman Dervish Sonmezler was cancelled, the paper reported.

The developer was quoted complaining that he was being kept in the dark.

The government has repeatedly complained to the CoE about the destruction of Greek and Christian cultural heritage in the north.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[07] One in five are diabetics

APPROXIMATELY one in five people are diabetics, but only half of them are aware of their condition, Health Minister Frixos Savvides yesterday told a news conference, announcing the setting up of the National Co-ordinating Committee for Diabetes.

Savvides said the Committee would come up with an action plan to help in the prevention, early diagnosis and effective treatment of the disease.

"There are about 60,000 people diagnosed as diabetics in Cyprus. But it is estimated that for every diagnosed case there is an undiagnosed one. So the number should be around 120,000," Savvides said.

It is estimated that in 2005, the number of people in the world suffering from diabetes will be around 300 million.

Addressing the news conference, the President of the Pancyprian Association for Diabetes, Sotiris Yiangou, charged that not much was being done to help diabetics and welcomed the government's decision to set up the national committee.

"Some of the causes of the disease are unhealthy diet, overeating and lack of exercise. The treatment of diabetes is based on balanced diet, exercise and medical care," Yiangou said.

The minister warned that patients who were not put on the right treatment were liable to develop one of the following: kidney disease, circulation problems, blindness, problems with the nervous system and maiming.

"The National Co-ordinating Committee for Diabetes will start be setting up diabetes records, which will enable it to conduct studies by comparing facts and figures and tracking down the causes of the disease," the minister said.

The Committee will be chaired by Savvides and among its members will be Health ministry officials, scientists, members of non-governmental organisations and journalists.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

[08] Autopsy confirms woman died in accident

A POST MORTEM yesterday found that the death on Saturday of a 31-year-old mother of four was the result of head injuries sustained during a traffic accident on a mountain road near the village of Palehori in the Nicosia district.

A passer by spotted the car at 1am on Sunday.

Media speculation had initially suggested that Elena Karaoli's death on Saturday could have been the result of foul play.

However, Pathologist Marios Matsakis yesterday put the rumours to rest when he announced after an autopsy that the woman had died from head injuries as a result of falling into a 30-metre ravine in the Papoutsa area near Palehori.

The rumours began after the woman's body was found in the back seat of the car, while bloodstains were found outside.

Matsakis said no evidence of foul play had been found on the 31-year-old's body and that she ended up in the back seat because she was not wearing a seatbelt.

She died of "injuries to the head from a traffic accident," Matsakis said.

He added: " No evidence of foul play was found on her body."

"When a car falls in a ravine the body, without a seatbelt, can be found anywhere inside or outside the car, Matsakis said.

"It is almost sure that if she had been wearing a seatbelt she would have been alive today," he added.

Police said blood samples were collected from the victim's body to test if she had been driving under the influence of alcohol.

Copyright Cyprus Mail 2001

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