Cyprus-Forum.com

[insan]

Tassos Papadopoulos

'Turk-basher' who might just reunify the country

Helena Smith
Monday February 17, 2003
The Guardian

Tassos Papadopoulos, elected last night as Cyprus's fifth president, is a clever lawyer but a controversial figure who inherits the unenviable task of negotiating United Nations plans to unite the divided island before it enters the EU.
The 69-year-old conservative is a hardliner who has rejected all previous UN attempts to reunify Cyprus. In the 70s, and again in the 80s when the then UN secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, produced his "set of ideas" - the nearest Greek and Turkish Cypriots had ever got to reconciliation - Mr Papadopoulos came down firmly on the side of the rejectionists.

His friends are now counting on him to keep it that way, while his foes - a not inconsiderable number - are hoping that as head of state he will finally see the light.

A prominent member of Eoka, the guerrilla group that campaigned in the 50s against British rule for union with Greece, the UK-trained barrister has rarely tried to dispel his reputation as a diehard nationalist. In the early 60s he was second in command of the Akritas organisation, whose avowed aim was to rid the island of Turkish Cypriots - a goal that ignited much intercommunal fighting and eventually led to the Turkish invasion in 1974.

In the 90s, as Greeks supported the Serbs during the Balkan wars, his law firm was alleged to have set up companies through which the Milosevic regime is believed to have circumvented the UN embargo and channelled funds for its armed forces. His alleged involvement in such activities got him blacklisted from parties and receptions at western embassies.

But as a consummate political animal Mr Papadopoulos knows when to move with the times. Campaigning for the presidency, he ran unabashedly on a ticket of "change". Backed by Cyprus's powerful communist party, Akel, which has long supported reconciliation, the wealthy rightwinger promised he could reach a settlement because "times had changed".

In recent months he has gone out of his way to pledge support for the Turkish Cypriots, even appealing to them to "participate in the happiness and welfare of a united Europe", as he cast his ballot yesterday.

The veteran Turkish Cypriot leader, Rauf Denktash, has already said he cannot do business with Mr Papadopoulos because of his "Turk-bashing", hardline past. But ultimately there can be little doubt that he will sit down with the new Greek Cypriot president because Ankara has made it plain that it wants negotiations to continue.

Some western diplomats point out that with age Mr Papadopoulos has not only mellowed but may well be the man to make the sort of compromises Greek Cypriots will accept in a referendum needed to clinch any solution



http://politics.guardian.co.uk/europe/s ... 20,00.html

[Saint Jimmy]

Do you know what's interesting about this...?

This guy, T-Pap, he is the very personification of what TCs are going to have to accept! He is a living participant in the sinister times of the Republic, now leading what's left of it, and that's exactly what your part of the compromise is going to have to be: forgiving and trusting.

I have never felt that the Cyprus problem is my problem... A handful of bigots did what they did and got us to where they did, but it's not my problem. I had no share in it, no say in it, I just inherited it. And my challenge is to get it out of the way, one way or the other... Not necessarily the fair way, or the patriotic way, or any given way, for that matter... I had nothing to do with its unfairness, or its treason.

Still, I carry my fathers' and grandfathers' sins on my shoulders. And you are going to have to forgive the sins I carry and trust me, in a sense.
That is what Tassos Papadopoulos represents. That is how you should see him.

It goes without saying that all this will only be of any value in the case of a solution. Until then, the president will not have proved that he deserves your forgiveness or trust.

This is just my opinion.