Irish PM to visit

IRISH PRIME Minister Bertie Aherne has announced a visit to Cyprus.

Arriving on January 9, Aherne will spend two days meeting with President Glafcos Clerides, Foreign Minister Takis Klerides and Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis.

He will also be meeting House president Spyros Kyprianou, Cyprus’ Chief EU negotiator George Vassiliou and prominent Cypriot businessmen before seeing UN Chief of Missions Zbigniew Wlosowicz and the Irish UN peacekeepers serving in Cyprus.

Aherne leads the Fianna Fail party, which forms the government with the Progressive Democrats, led by Mary Harney and the independent TDs (members of the Irish parliament, Dail Eireann).

The popularity of the Taoiseach remains high since his involvement in the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, and the continuing relative good health of the Irish economy.

The Good Friday agreement in 1998 saw David Trimble and Seamus Mallon, a Unionist and a nationalist, elected as Minister and Deputy Minister of the new Northern Ireland Assembly, which sat for the first time on July 1 of that year.

The assembly was the result of elections in both parts of Ireland, which overwhelmingly voted to accept the agreement.

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.