IF YOU ARE bored of all the unnatural gas produced by our opinion formers talking about the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that we will be exploiting in the not too distant future, do not worry because we have very little to say on the matter.
We shall briefly examine the political dimensions of the gas find, which according to many analysts creates an opportunity for us to forge a strategic alliance with Israel, which has fallen out big-time with the Turks. More importantly, Israel is the closest ally of the US in the area and if we forge an alliance with it we will automatically enjoy the favour of Washington, or so the argument goes.
The Israelis want to use us to export their natural gas in liquefied form to Europe, because they have no other way of getting it there. Turkey is not an option and neither are any of its other neighbours. Many politicians and commentators have been calling on the government to start talks with the Israeli government.
It is a historic opportunity for us to behave like an important regional player and to create new false hopes about the prospects of a fair settlement of the Cyprob. This opportunity could not have come at a better time – just a few days before the meeting in Geneva where the UN Secretary General and Big Bad Al would try to impose an unfair settlement on us, via asphyxiating time-frames, foreign intervention and arbitration.
Israel is our only hope and I hope the comrade recognises this.
MY INTELLECTUAL powers – what there is of them – must be in decline because, for the second week running, I am obliged to include a correction. On the bright side, it is not dictated by some smart-ass lawyer, but by our desire to provide our customers with accurate information.
I refer to the presentation, by our three living presidents, of the eagerly-awaited book by retired diplomat turned high-level fixer Sotos Zackheos. The book presentation will take place at the B of C on February 1 and not 2 as we had reported last Sunday.
This may be irrelevant to the general public as personal invitations have been sent out – I suspect to the crème de la crème – for this glamorous literary event, which gives the author the opportunity to subtly advertise the fact that despite his humble origins, he is now an influential big-shot, whom all our living presidents are eager to please.
Incidentally the book’s title, which I omitted to mention last week, is Kypriaki Diplomatia ke Paraskinio (Cypriot diplomacy and behind-the-scenes activity), which presumably would go through Zackheos’ career as our permanent representative at the UN and his stint as foreign ministry perm sec during the A-plan period.
Political circles are wondering whether his book would reveal how he persuaded the Clerides government to amend the law regarding the four-year maximum period a diplomat could stay in one post. The law was amended specifically for Zackheos who wanted to stay longer than the maxiumum four years as our perm rep at the UN. He might also reveal how he persuaded the government to employ his wife (a civil servant), quite irregularly, at the mission while he was serving in New York.
LAST WEEK we wrote about how the Council of Ministers had granted Cypriot citizenship to a Russian billionaire for “offering the highest level services to the Cyprus Republic through his business activities”. The citizenship was given without the billionaire satisfying the requirements of the law.
In the same Phil article, it was reported that interior minister Neoclis Sylikiotis, had also recommended the granting of citizenship, ‘exceptionally’, to two senior executives of the Russian Commercial Bank (Cyprus) and “two Russian women included in their application.”
Sylikiotis argued that the “top level services” which justified the exceptional granting of citizenship “were related to deposits of millions of euro they keep in banking institutions in Cyprus and to the millions of euro in revenue the Republic collected from these people through the offshore companies they registered in Cyprus.”
But what about the two Russian women, included in the applications of the two senior bank executives? What did they do to justify the exceptional granting of citizenship? Is the Republic following the supermarket practice of offering Cyprus citizenship, exceptionally, on a ‘buy one, get one free’ basis?
THE HIGH-LEVEL fixer, Sotos Zackheos may have had something to do with the above-mentioned exceptional granting of citizenships. He is an executive director of the Russian Commercial Bank (Cyprus), the Nicosia offices of which were opened by President Medvedev during his official visit last October.
Sotos, who could be seen hovering behind the main guests during the opening, is ideally placed to arrange a couple of citizenships for his fellow-executives and their friends at the bank as he enjoys very close ties with the comrade president. He is, among other things, Special Envoy of the President on Arab Affairs and Russia, and he accompanied Mrs Comrade on a visit to Qatar, a couple of years ago.
It is strange that Zackheos was not called in by the comrade to rescue the Qatar deal, given his connections in the Arab world. We could offer a couple of Qatari big-shots Cyprus citizenship and they could each add a friend in the application to the Council of Ministers.
SPEAKING of Qatar, the agreement for the development of the area opposite the Hilton Hotel is currently looking as likely as Cyprus joining NATO. The Qataris have completely lost interest and nobody seems to know why.
The bash-patriotic camp seems to believe that Turkey’s PM Erdogan had persuaded the Emir of Qatar, during an official visit some 10 days ago, not to invest in Cyprus, but it is unlikely that the sultan would have bothered with an investment of a few dozen millions, when securing deals worth several billions for Turkish companies.
Another theory is that the Qataris got pissed off with the way were trying to fleece them, claiming the land was worth €100 million plus, when according to their own calculations it was not worth more than €50 million.
In the last week, our establishment had heard that the Emir’s entourage was unhappy with our flirting with Israel regarding the natural gas. They are probably afraid of the prospect of a geo-strategic alliance between Cyprus and Israel and decided to punish us.
OUR MOLES at DISY have explained to us why the party refuses to take a tough line about the scandal of Open University’s Interim Governing Committee which has been in place for eight years and its chairman, Panos Razis has been obdurately refusing to step down, despite calls to do so by the education minister.
Razis, who should have stepped down from acute embarrassment for failing to finish a job that should have been completed in three or four years, after eight years, simply will not go because he remains “committed to the service of the community”. Some deputies in DISY, which put him there in the first place, have been urging the party to take a public stand against Razis’ pathetic behaviour, but the leadership does not agree.
The reason is that Razis has the backing of the well-known patron of bash-patriotic academics – Archbishop Chrys. Chrys, we have learnt, has asked the Fuhrer not to take a stand against Razis and to back the extension of his failed chairmanship, when it finally expires in March.
The man who secured the Archbishop’s support for Razis was another bash-patriotic academic, the Athens-based Christodoulos Yiallourides, who is also a member of the IGC. And with the Fuhrer, hoping to have Chrys’ blessing for his presidential candidacy, we would not be surprised if DISY supports a renewal of the dismal chairmanship of Razis, for another eight years, come March. Failure cannot be left unrewarded.
SEVERAL customers wrote in last week explaining how we could have put the two dots over the ‘u’ in ‘uber’. One customer also informed us that:
“Deutchland über alles is the first line of the first stanza of ‘Das Lied der Deutchen,’ i.e. ‘the Song of the Germans’ which has been used as the German National Anthem since 1922. In 1952 however West Germany adopted only the third stanza for its anthem. This was confirmed upon German Unification in 1990.”
We thank the reader for his correction.
STAYING on the subject of our new-found ally, Germany, last weekend’s edition of the International Herald Tribune carried a report which claimed that Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy intensely disliked each other.
Apparently, they both make fun of each other, in private. The IHT wrote: “She has compared him to Mr Bean and to the French comic Louis de Funes, with his curly hair and large nose. He sometimes calls her ‘La Boche,’ the offensive French version of ‘Kraut’ and goes out of his way to give her an embrace and a double-cheeked kiss in the French fashion, the kind of contact that he knows very well, aides say, she cannot stand.”
On her arrival at the Palast des Volkes in Nicosia 10 days ago, the cordial comrade gave our angelic Angela an embrace and a double-cheeked kiss. Had he not done so Merkel could have even called for the immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops from the island, but how was he to know?
THE GUY is a sweetie as he showed last Wednesday, when he called the afternoon television show, Me tin Elita, on which the guest was his comrade wife Elsi. Apart from telling viewers how wonderful she was, he declared on air that he was “eternally in love” with her, causing her to blush like a schoolgirl.
To compound her embarrassment, the comrade lovingly said of his missus, “Look at that smile.” The man is a true romantic even if he is no Lord Byron when articulating his feelings. My only concern is that a president who has time to sit and watch day-time TV cannot be very hard-working.
ONE MAN who does not watch day-time TV because he is too busy struggling for the salvation of Kyproulla is former foreign minister Yiorkos Lillikas. This week Yiorkos was in Paris, addressing a meeting to mark the 50th anniversary of the Cyprus Republic at the French Parliament.
The meeting, according to the Tass News Agency report, “was organised at the French Parliament by the Cyprus-France Friendship Group, after his personal initiative.” We congratulate him for taking such a brave and original initiative, which is guaranteed to lead nowhere, just like the defence agreement with France that he forged when he was minister.
TO BE FAIR the close ties Lillikas forged with France is the main reason we now use French words in our daily vocabulary. Who would ever have thought that the word ‘plafond’ would have ever entered common usage? Now, even the last Paphos villager knows what ‘plafond’ means. Speaking of which, when is the minister of plafonds going to impose his plafonds on milk and bread. I have bought neither since he made his announcement, waiting for the prices to come down, but nothing has happened yet and weetabix just doesn’t taste right without milk.
