President invited for official visit to Britain

PRESIDENT Tassos Papadopoulos has received an invitation from British Prime Minister Tony Blair to visit London, the government confirmed yesterday.
Government Spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides said the invitation was extended on April 8.

”President Papadopoulos does not make public his international engagements and for this reason we were expecting London to make the announcement about the visit,” Chrysostomides said, adding that the date of the visit would be fixed through diplomatic channels.

British Minister for European Affairs Peter Hain said on Tuesday that he was “delighted” to announce that “President Papadopoulos has been invited to Britain for an official visit later this year to discuss, on behalf of the Cyprus government, his own views towards promoting peace and a settlement on the island.”

Britain takes over the six-monthly rotating presidency of the European Union in July.

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.