Cyprus News Agency: News in English (AM), 97-02-26

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From: The Cyprus News Agency at <http://www.cyna.org.cy>

CONTENTS

[01] Cyprus and Armenia to sign double-taxation deal

[02] EU wants to appease Turkey, says Cypriot Minister

[03] Cyprus Trade Union Forum in mid-March

[04] Ayios Themonianos frescoes in Houston

[05] Cyprus Stock Exchange

1030:CYPPRESS:01

[01] Cyprus and Armenia to sign double-taxation deal

In an interview with the weekly "Cyprus Financial Mirror", Armenia's Finance Minister, Vahram Avanessian, said negotiations on the issue are proceeding smoothly and noted a formal agreement is expected to be signed in the next couple of months.

Avanessian took part at a meeting here over the weekend attended by Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors from twelve International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank member-states.

The Armenian Minister told the "Financial Mirror" his country has already signed double-taxation agreements with ten countries and is in the process of completing similar agreements with another 30, including Cyprus.

Commenting on the IMF meeting, Avanessian praised his Cypriot hosts and said the meetings were conducted at very high standards.

He said during a meeting with Cyprus Development Bank (CDB) Director, John Ioannides, it was agreed that the CDB undertake a number of investments in Armenia.

These investments, Avanessian explained, will mostly be in partnership with other investment banks, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) or with Greek banks that are already very active in Armenia.

CNA AP/GP/1997

ENDS, CYPRUS NEWS AGENCY

1050:CYPPRESS:02

[02] EU wants to appease Turkey, says Cypriot Minister

The Minister noted that such moves tend to create "tension and unnecessary complications" in Cyprus' attempts to move closer to Europe and acknowledged that the road to EU membership "is not a bed of roses."

"My understanding is that the moves we witnessed over the past couple of days (attempts to include Turkish Cypriot participation in the accession process under a special status) are not necessarily against Cyprus but indicate that there is an effort to make an offering to Turkey," Michaelides told Cyprus radio today.

Speaking from Brussels, where he attended a meeting of the EU-Cyprus Association Council, Michaelides said Tuesday's postponed meeting between the EU and Cyprus, part of the political dialogue between the two in anticipation of accession negotiations, may take place at the end of March.

These moves, he pointed out, certainly create "tension and unnecessary complications" and added "it is crystal clear that they (EU) are going to organise something as an offering to Turkey."

On Tuesday, the 15 member-states failed to reach a joint statement on EU-Cyprus relations due to the insistence of Britain, France and Germany to include phrases, open to different interpretations, calling for the participation of all Cypriots in the accession process. Greece made counterproposals on the issue but were turned down.

The Cyprus government has said it would welcome Turkish Cypriots in the official Cyprus Republic delegation and is prepared to take this further if the Turkish side responds accordingly. The EU has said in past decisions that its "sole interlocutor" is the legal government of the Republic of Cyprus.

The Cypriot Foreign Minister pointed out that the proposed text for inclusion in the joint statement "would have paved the way for many other misinterpretations."

Michaelides said Cyprus has not asked Europe to pre-empt the outcome of the accession negotiations when invited to comment on a statement by Britain's Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, that progress towards EU accession is linked to progress towards a negotiated settlement of the protracted Cyprus problem.

"The EU decision of March 6, 1995 that accession talks will start six months after the end of the Intergovernmental Conference has determined the start of these talks. Their outcome is more important than the course they follow and it will depend on various developments," the Minister explained.

He stressed that although the government wishes to see Cyprus join the EU, its primary concern is to find a solution of the Cyprus question.

"We call on all those who are concerned about the absence of a solution to work in a serious and effective manner towards a solution," Michaelides said.

He revealed that he is scheduled to have separate meetings next month with his European counterparts in London, Bonn, Paris, Rome and the Netherlands.

On Monday, Cyprus and Greece are planning to hold a meeting in Athens to review recent developments and draft out future moves.

Cyprus divided since the 1974 Turkish invasion applied for full EU membership in 1990. It signed an association agreement in 1972 and a customs union agreement in 1987.

CNA MM/GP/1997

ENDS, CYPRUS NEWS AGENCY

1200:CYPPRESS:03

[03] Cyprus Trade Union Forum in mid-March

The organising committee said the working conference will be pursuant to the January 1995 Forum, which was described as "successful".

The main topic of the March conference will be "The consequences to workers of Cyprus' accession to the European Union".

Deliberations of the first and third days of the Forum will take place in the free areas of Nicosia. The deliberations of the second day, will take place in the Turkish-occupied northern part of the capital.

Turkish troops have been occupying 37 per cent of Cyprus territory since 1974, in violation of repeated UN resolutions calling for their withdrawal.

CNA MH/GP/1997

ENDS, CYPRUS NEWS AGENCY

1230:CYPPRESS:04

[04] Ayios Themonianos frescoes in Houston

Nicosia, Feb 26 (CNA) -- The somber expression on His face and the power of His gaze set against a sky-blue background, stamp His majesty and authority over His servants below. With His right hand, He blesses all those who lift their eyes to look upon him. In His left is the Logos, the Word of God. His image is infinite, beyond any concept of time and space.

If you concentrate upon His divine image long enough, His mouth will open and speak out, "Woe to those who dare defile this holy image and those who profit from its treatment as mere chattel".

The early 14th century fresco of Christ the Pantocrator from the small church of Ayios Themonianos in the Turkish-occupied town of Lysi, in eastern Cyprus, like all Byzantine art, transcends all conventional art concepts. The Christian Orthodox faithful believe the hallowed images are visual incarnations of God's Kingdom, divinely inspired and a tangible conduit to the Almighty Himself.

So when Christ the Pantocrator and another fresco of the Virgin Mary ended up in the hands of a shady Turkish art smuggler trying to sell it off like just another stolen art treasure to the Houston-based Menil Foundation, alarm bells went off all around.

"The frescoes were under the possession of that notorious character, Aydin Dikmen, who also stole other art from the occupied parts of Cyprus," Athanasios Papageorgiou, former Director of the island's Antiquities Department and a leading expert on the frescoes, told CNA.

Dikmen is widely acknowledged to head an art smuggling ring from his home base, Munich, Germany. When word got out around art collector circles in the mid-eighties that two frescoes of inestimable value were on the market, Dikmen's middleman, Yannis Petsopoulos, contacted Houston-based art collector, Dominique de Menil. De Menil is known for her keen interest in Byzantine art.

"When in 1985, Mrs. de Menil went with Petsopoulos and the director of the Menil Foundation to Dikmen's house to see the frescoes, the Turk told them they come from a church in Turkey," Papageorgiou recounts.

But the two were not convinced because the frescoes were of superb quality and could not have been cast-offs from some abandoned church.

"The frescoes were definitely cut by experts," Father Demos Demosthenous, told CNA. Father Demosthenous is Director of the Archbishopric's Icon Maintenance Department. His conclusion rests on the fact that the frescoes were cut more or less geometrically, so as not to destroy their most important features.

As a result, de Menil assigned the Foundation's lawyers to contact the embassies of Greece, Cyprus and Turkey to confirm the frescoes' origins.

"Turkey immediately said they belonged to it. We understood immediately that the frescoes came from Ayios Themonianos because in 1973, the Department of Antiquities had cleaned these frescoes," Papageorgiou said, who was the Department's Director at the time.

The Menil Foundation however, was not convinced of the Cypriot claim of ownership and its lawyers insisted on ironclad evidence.

"We sent them the Antiquities Department's 1973 annual report which referred to our cleaning and maintenance efforts. There was a picture before and after the cleaning, so the Foundation became convinced," Papageorgiou added.

It was at that point when de Menil contacted the Cyprus government and the Head of the Church of Cyprus, Archbishop Chrysostomos, to negotiate her purchase of the frescoes and their permanent stay in her foundation.

At first, the Church of Cyprus was adamant the frescoes be returned to Cyprus immediately, but de Menil persuaded the Church to keep them in Houston using a trump card: she would pay for their purchase, their restoration and subsequent exhibition in an Orthodox-style church, similar to that of Ayios Themonianos.

"It's a loan. The frescoes were not returned immediately because Mrs. de Menil assumed the expenses for their restoration and purchase. It is a compromise reached between the Menil Foundation, the Church of Cyprus and the Cyprus government," Papageorgiou said.

A formal agreement was reached between the Foundation and the Church to exhibit the frescoes for 20 years in the small church, with ownership of both the frescoes and the church resting with the Church of Cyprus. The agreement would have taken effect in January, 1986, but delays in the construction of the Foundation's church pushed the agreed upon date a bit farther back.

"An extension was granted by the Church to the Foundation because the small church was not ready according to schedule, so the deadline for the frescoes' return has been extended to 2012," Papageorgiou said.

The small church designed and built by the Menil Foundation was designed in traditional Byzantine dome-hall style. The idea was for the frescoes to be exhibited within an appropriate religious context, since anything less would devalue their spiritual significance.

"It is foremost an ecclesiastical structure, an Orthodox Church," Papageorgiou stressed. The church is scheduled to be consecrated as a place of worship by his Beatitude, Archbishop Chrysostomos, later this May.

De Menil has been trying to convince the Church of Cyprus to allow the frescoes to remain in Houston forever, but the Church will not budge.

It remains an extremely sensitive issue since much of the island's religious treasures continue to be plundered, exported and sold abroad from the Turkish-occupied north, since the 1974 Turkish invasion and occupation of 37 per cent of the island's territory. The Church has mounted a relentless search for other priceless frescoes, icons and mosaics, all over the world.

Sadly, the Ayios Themonianos frescoes are just the peak to a veritable iceberg of criminal profiteering from the most sacred of commodities. Cases abound where Cypriot spiritual items were sold to international art dealers through a web of suspicious dealings, shady characters and illegal sales, all with the blessing of Turkey.

"You can't move things like that out of occupied Cyprus without the big boys at least knowing about it," Papageorgiou said.

The most infamous of the bunch to date, was the sale of four 6th century mosaics from the ancient Church of Kanakaria, at the Turkish- occupied village of Lythrangomi, near the Karpass peninsula.

The main protagonist was once again, Aydin Dikmen, who, through his octopus-like network of contacts in Europe and the United States, found a buyer in Peg Goldberg, an Indianapolis-based art dealer.

Both the Cyprus government and the Church of Cyprus mobilized to recover the stolen mosaics, which are among the rarest examples of pre- iconoclast Byzantine art.

The four mosaics, hastily ripped off the church's interior by the thieves, measure about two feet square and depict the figure of Jesus, the bust of one of the attending archangels, the apostles Matthew and James.

The Church succeeded in repatriating the mosaics after a legal battle with Goldberg in 1990.

"Dikmen was archaeological director of the so-called state museum of northern occupied Cyprus, so no Turkish authority would dare prosecute him, " lawyer Michalakis Kyprianou, who had followed the case from beginning to end, told CNA.

Dikmen remained beyond the reach of Cypriot authorities, Kyprianou said, because he does business out of Munich, and because none of his Turkish colleagues would testify against him.

The entire affair goes far beyond the issues of ownership, property and profit. It is above all, a spiritual matter. And to a people that have inhabited an island which bore witness to the birth of Christianity, it is an issue that goes straight to their very essence.

CNA MH/GP/1997

ENDS, CYPRUS NEWS AGENCY

1430:CYPPRESS:05

[05] Cyprus Stock Exchange

CSE All Share Index                    76.82 (-0.86)

Highest: 82.46 (2/1/97)
Lowest : 73.90 (30/1/97)

Sectural Indices

Banks                                  87.83 (-0.44)
Approved Investment Companies          64.80 (-0.98)
Insurance Companies                    57.70 (-1.22)
Industrial Companies                   73.18 (-0.97)
Tourist Industries                     62.97 (-0.96)
Commercial Companies                   52.32 (-3.13)
Other Companies                        56.38 (-2.86)

Trading Volume                         CYP 522745.126

CNA MCH/1997

ENDS, CYPRUS NEWS AGENCY

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