PRESIDENT Clerides yesterday issued a personal plea to Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to resolve the issue of missing persons once and for all.
He was speaking at the official opening of the ‘House of the Missing’, a memorial building at Kornos to the 1,619 Greek Cypriot missing since the Turkish invasion in 1974.
“I would like to take this opportunity to send a personal plea to Mr Denktash to re-
examine his side’s position and to work constructively to solve this issue, ” Clerides said.
“Our goal is to make certain of the fate of all the missing and satisfy the right of the families to be informed with convincing evidence. Unfortunately there has so far not been the expected response from the other side.”
On July 31, 1997, Clerides and Denktash, in the presence of then UN Permanent Representative Gustave Feissel, agreed to an exchange of information on the missing. The Turkish Cypriot side claims 803 missing persons between 1963 and 1974.
Clerides said this agreement had revived the hopes of the Greek Cypriot side that Denktash would take the political initiative to allow a solution to the problem. Denktash has said on several occasions that all the missing persons are dead.
Files on the whereabouts of 400 Greek Cypriots and 200 Turkish Cypriots were eventually exchanged between the two sides in January 1998.
“But they once again backed down on what was agreed and refused to implement the decision,” Clerides said. “We have honoured every part of the agreement in the time frame stated and are ready to complete and immediately implement the plan for exhumations in the free areas.”
Experts have already been appointed and work will begin shortly. Clerides said it is hoped the exhumation process will be completed by the end of this year.
Work is expected to begin at the Lakatamia cemetery to open 65 unmarked graves, long believed to hold the remains of many missing persons, mostly soldiers.
After remains are exhumed they will be DNA tested at the Institute of Neurology and Genetics which has been gathering data from relatives of the missing for its DNA bank for more than a year.
The new House of the Missing was built by Father Christoforos Economou, a former head of one of the committees for missing persons, whose son is on the list.