Cyprus' president urged citizens to respect the results of yesterday's referendum to reunite their island after 30 years of division, joining a steady stream of voters to cast his "no" vote. The Turkish Cypriot leader, also voting against the plan, complained that Cypriots were being "kicked around" and pushed into a premature vote.
Chances of approval by both sides of the island in separate, simultaneous referendums are slim because of the plan's required compromises: limiting refugees' rights to return, equal sharing of political power, uprooting dozens of villages.
Rejection of the plan -- an unprecedented appeal from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the people to impose an entirely new political structure after leaders could not agree -- by voters on either side could make for a frosty May 1 entry to the EU for Cyprus.
PHOTO: AP
"I appeal to everyone, whatever the result, there should be no celebrations. Don't blacken the day with incidents," President Tassos Papadopoulos told reporters after voting in his hometown of Pano Deftera, about 25km south of Nicosia. "We will move forward united, as the people of Cyprus -- Greek and Turkish Cypriots -- deserve a better future."
Recent polls have indicated 65 percent to 70 percent of Greek Cypriots would reject the plan. Turkish Cypriot voters in the north, however, were expected to approve it, despite the vehement opposition of their leader, Rauf Denktash. To them, the plan is seen as a way to ease poverty that has come with their international isolation since the Turkish invasion in 1974 that divided the island. Only Turkey recognizes the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state.
Denktash told reporters Cypriots didn't really know what they were voting on. A frequent complaint on both sides of the island was that there was too little time for people to understand the 220-page plan and its 9,000 pages of annexes. "We don't know what surprises the plan will spring on us," he said after voting.
He criticized the international community for pushing the referendums on Cypriots. The EU as well as the US and British governments have pressed hard for passage of the UN reunification plan, which was finalized less than two weeks before yesterday's vote. Cypriots have been warned the world isn't interested in revisiting the reunification subject anytime soon if they reject the plan, and they've been tempted with promises a positive response would earn them hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
"This could not have been done in Europe because they are treated as civilized people," he said. "We are Cypriots; we can be pushed around, kicked around and told what to do."
The plan envisages a federation of two politically equal states, one for the 643,000 Greek Cypriots and one for the 180,000 Turks and Turkish Cypriots in the north, under a weak central government. The Turkish area would be reduced from 37 percent of the island to 29 percent, requiring entire villages to be uprooted and the homes to be returned to the original Greek Cypriot owners.
The number of foreign troops -- currently 40,000 Turks and 6,000 Greeks -- would be gradually reduced to a maximum of 6,000 by 2011 and 1,600 by 2018.
The main Greek Cypriot objections are that the plan limits the right of Greek Cypriot refugees to return to homes they fled when the island was divided, while allowing tens of thousands of Turkish settlers introduced to the occupied north since 1974 to remain.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS