Papandreou buoyant, but no Turkey visit set for Simitis

Pelin Turgut

GREEK Foreign Minister George Papandreou said yesterday that improving relations with Turkey would help end the 25-year division of Cyprus.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Costas Simitis said in Athens that he had no immediate plans to take up an invitation to visit extended on Thursday by Turkish premier Bulent Ecevit.

Papandreou, on the first visit to Ankara by a Greek foreign minister since 1962, said the easing in relations between the two ancient adversaries — and Nato allies — over the last six months had helped to establish an atmosphere of trust.

“This momentum is going to help resolve problems (on Cyprus),” Papandreou told Turkish journalists, according to Anatolian news agency. “There could be nothing as natural as the two sides on Cyprus coming together. There is a process in progress and we are trying to create a process both sides can agree on.”

During a televsion interview, Papandreou said: “I want to see a happy marriage in Cyprus instead of a successful separation.”

Later Papandreou flew from Ankara to Istanbul to meet businessmen and the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, Bartholomeus. Afterwards he publicly backed a request from the patriarchate for permission to re-open a Greek Orthodox seminary on the Turkish island of Halki, closed since 1971 as an illegal education institution.

Papandreou’s visit, ending today, crowned half a year of intense diplomacy since relations chilled after fugitive Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was given refuge in the Greek embassy in Kenya. In August there was a wave of sympathy and aid from Greece when an earthquake in Turkey killed over 17, 000 people. Turkey reciprocated weeks later in what became known as “seismic diplomacy” when a tremor hit Athens.

A Greek embassy official in Ankara said a long-standing dispute over the construction of embassies had been settled. A joint working group will tackle Greek plans to build an embassy on wasteland on Ankara’s main boulevard and, in exchange, Turkey will receive land in an Athens suburb for the same purpose.

United nations “proximity talks” between Cyprus President Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, opened in New York last month, are due to continue next Thursday in Geneva. The aim is to pave the way for face-to-face negotiations, possibly by the summer.

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.