TURKISH Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, 78, said yesterday he may have to undergo heart surgery in the coming months.
Denktash and President Glafcos Clerides are due to resume talks tomorrow in their bid to resolve the island’s division before the European Union accepts Cyprus as a member, probably in 2004.
“My doctors’ advice is that within the next six to 12 months I should give serious thought to heart surgery,” Denktash told Reuters, saying the diagnosis coincided with his decision to ask Clerides to begin face-to-face talks in January.
“That is why I said from the beginning, without disclosing this problem, that June is a convenient time to finish everything that we can,” he said.
Denktash said doctors would decide in June whether he should undergo immediate surgery, and if so, talks would have to break off while he recovered.
He said doctors had found a blockage of his aorta and wanted to correct a heart valve problem. He said he felt fine but that he had had a few problems in recent months.
He said he was told by doctors in Ankara and Istanbul that it would be better for him to undergo surgery before getting too old.
Denktash, who has a history of heart trouble, said doctors had told him he needed to lose up to 15 kilos. He suffered a heart attack in 1996 and had surgery a year later.
The Turkish Cypriot TAK news agency quoted Denktash as saying: “This (surgery) is one of the factors in resolving the Cyprus issue at some point.”
Denktash said he was trying to lose weight and that he had lost 1-2 kg so far.
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.
