Cyprus Mail: Press Review in English, 98-06-17

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From: The Cyprus Mail at <http://www.cynews.com/>

Wednesday, June 16, 1998

France ingratiates itself with Turkey

ALL NEWSPAPERS reported with a sigh of relief that the European Union summit in Cardiff would leave Cyprus's accession talks with the bloc unaffected.

France's proposal to suspend the talks would not be discussed because Cyprus was not on the meeting's agenda, the papers said.

Simerini noted that President Chirac had no intention of tabling a proposal to suspend entry talks, although France's official position remained that Cyprus's accession was problematic as the European _acquis communautaire _could not be implemented in the occupied area.

Diplomatic sources told the paper that France was taking this negative stand on Cyprus in order to curry favour with Turkey, to which it hoped to sell military equipment worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Moreover, French companies had invested billions of pounds in Turkey.

Alithia said Chirac was expected to table his proposal even though he did not want a decision to be taken in Cardiff. He would simply repeat the French view that the whole population of Cyprus should benefit from EU membership.

However, the British presidency of the EU said it was not prepared to accept a veto of Cyprus's accession talks. A representative of the presidency said the talks had already begun and the Cyprus government had invited Turkish Cypriots to participate in them.

Phileleftheros said Turkey's claim that it had found seven platforms for missile launchers on a Maltese cargo ship passing through the Dardanelles straits was a clear attempt by Ankara to keep the missile issue alive so as to hurt Cyprus economically and diplomatically.

Turkey treated the matter seriously, even though it did not specify whether the platforms found were for S-300 missiles. Military experts inspected the platforms, while Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz had been kept informed. The factory producing the S-300 missiles denied the report, saying it had not begun the delivery to Cyprus.

Machi accused Turkey of piracy in its efforts to prevent the missile system from arriving in Cyprus.

The paper accused Turkey of violating international agreements by its actions. It noted that this was not the first time Turkey had stopped and searched a ship that had left Russia.

Haravghi led with a front-page editorial praising the communist party Akel for being in the forefront of the fight of the Cypriot people for freedom, social progress and justice for 72 years.

Its activities, based on Marxist-Leninist theory, served the interests of the workers and the overwhelming majority of the people. Akel was "proud of its history, struggles, sacrifices, and ideology".

© Copyright Cyprus Mail 1998

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