Brill meets Clerides over Kyprianou ‘snub’

PRESIDENT Glafcos Clerides held talks with American ambassador Kenneth Brill yesterday in a meeting thought to have focused on the diplomat’s alleged snub of House President Spyros Kyprianou when he was serving as acting President earlier this month.

Kyprianou insists that Brill’s refusal to meet with him to discuss American criticism of opposition views on Nato’s bombing of Yugoslavia was a snub not only to him but to the island as a whole. He later said that he would have declared Brill persona non grataif he was president.

Brill refused comment on the issue as he left the Presidential Palace yesterday, limiting his statements to the G8’s intervention in the Cyprus problem.

“I have been here for three years, and I have come out for these sessions for three years, and have I ever told what we talked about?” a smiling Brill told reporters after his 40-minute meeting with Clerides.

“I don’t get into the details of my discussions with the President,” added Brill, who is scheduled to leave his post in August if the US Senate confirms the nomination of his successor Donald Bandler.

Reports suggested, however, yesterday that Clerides had raised the dispute with Brill, and that the President would be discussing the problem with Kyprianou again.

On Friday, Kyprianou met with Clerides to present the President with party opinions on the issue, telling reporters that Clerides would highlight the issue yesterday: “The President… will give particular emphasis on the fact that the Ambassador of the US refused to meet with the Acting- president of the Republic,” Kyprianou said on Friday.

With President Clerides away on a state visit to China, Kyprianou called on Brill earlier this month to protest American embassy criticism of the anti- Nato stance of his own Diko party and communist Akel. Both parties claim the comments are an unacceptable interference in Cyprus’ domestic politics.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.