Growing challenge for the Foreign Ministry

THE GOVERNMENT’S primary aim is to find a fair and viable solution to the Cyprus problem, while promoting its positions abroad, the Foreign Minister said yesterday.

Presenting his ministry’s budget for 2009, Minister Markos Kyprianou said the state was planning to create new diplomatic missions abroad.

“Exercising an effective and multi-levelled foreign policy is today the Ministry’s biggest challenge and in today’s world of globalisation with the daily challenges we are called to deal with, and with the Cyprus problem that remains unresolved after 34 years, the Foreign Ministry is possibly in one of the most significant periods since the day of its establishment,” said Kyprianou.

From now until the end of 2009, the ministry plans to establish six new diplomatic missions, while in co-operation with Malta, it will open a Representation Office in Ramallah. It is also in talks to plan common diplomatic missions with other EU member states.

The ministry’s budget for 2009 will reach €80,256,178, down on last year’s €81.9 million.

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.