Grave robbers have dug up the coffin of former Cyprus President Tassos Papadopoulos and stolen his corpse, police said Friday. Mounds of fresh earth lay at the site of the robbery in the Deftera village cemetery in a southwestern suburb of the Cypriot capital, Nicosia. Police investigators cordoned off the area and were searching the site. The motive was unclear. Saturday is the first anniversary of the death of Papadopoulos, who was Cyprus' president from 2003 to 2008. Investigators believe the body was taken either late Thursday night or early Friday morning. The motive is unclear. Grave-robbing is rare in Cyprus. "What happened is macabre and utterly condemnable. I am honestly still trying to comprehend what kind of warped minds could even think of doing such a thing, let alone actually carry it out. This is a perverse act that will sicken society in Cyprus," said the head of Cyprus' ruling AKEL party, Andros Kyprianou. Kypros Chrysostomides, who served as justice minister under Papadopoulos, also expressed outrage. "I totally condemn, with all my soul, this barbarous act of sacrilege," he said. "I cannot understand why somebody would want to do such a thing. ... Such barbarous acts only do damage to Cyprus." Papadopoulos, a hardline president who ushered the ethnically divided island into the European Union after rallying Greek Cypriots to reject a United Nations-brokered peace deal, died a year ago on Saturday from lung cancer at age 74. He served as president from 2003 until March 2008, when he lost the presidential election to current President Demetris Christofias. A British-trained lawyer, Papadopoulos was a veteran of Cyprus politics whose career spanned most of the island's turbulent history since gaining independence from British colonial rule in 1960. He was a leader of the Greek Cypriot guerrilla group EOKA, which waged an anti-colonial campaign, and served as the youngest cabinet minister in the island's first post-independence government, at the age of 26. Papadopoulos was for a time the chief Greek Cypriot negotiator in settlement talks with the breakaway Turkish Cypriots after 1974, when Turkey invaded the island. The former president is probably best remembered for an emotional televised appeal to Greek Cypriots to reject a reunification plan brokered by then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which he vilified as entrenching the island's division rather than ending it. Three quarters of Cypriots obliged him in an April 2004 referendum.
Adolf Hitler's remains were burned and dumped into a German river by Soviet KGB agents in 1970, according to the head archivist of Russia's Federal Security Service. The service, the successor to the KGB, said the action was ordered by then-KGB head Yuri Andropov with consent from the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party, according to news reports. Gen. Vasily Khristoforov said in an interview with the Interfax news agency that the remains of Hitler's wife, Eva Braun, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels and Goebbels' entire family also were destroyed in the operation. The remains were thrown into the Biederitz River. Soviet leaders felt that Hitler's burial site could become a gathering place for Nazi sympathizers or those who supported fascist ideas, according to the documents. The bodies had originally been buried in 1946 on the territory of a Soviet military facility. Khristoforov said that fragments of Hitler's jawbone and skull still are kept in Russia.
Israel and Turkey are close to becoming members of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research — or CERN, the world’s top particle physics centre — barring last-minute political objections. The move is being seen as expanding the pioneering research of CERN beyond its home continent for the first time. The two states are among five whose applications may be approved next Friday by the governing council of the Geneva-based laboratory. The laboratory’s star project, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was restarted successfully this month after a year’s stoppage for repairs. In tests this week the accelerator eclipsed the American-held record for sub-atomic particle collisions, staff said. The expansion of the 55-year-old organisation will lead it to become an international body, Rolf Heuer, its director-general, told The Times. Officials say there have been no objections from CERN’s 20 member states — but Israel says Switzerland is expressing reservations and it also fears that Greek objections to Turkey’s membership could endanger its own bid. “Greece is the last country opposed to Israel having accession,” an Israeli government official said. “They are opposed to the package deal. They do not want to see Turkey inside.” Each member state holds a potential veto in the secret ballot for membership. The applicants, which also include Serbia, Slovenia and Cyprus, are being treated as a single group. Greece says that it is not opposed to any of the applicants, provided they fulfil the criteria. “Opposition is definitely not coming from us,” Michael Diamessis, deputy-chief of the Greek UN Mission in Geneva, told The Times. “Greece is in favour of accepting all the countries that have applied.” French officials also voiced support for all the applicants, denying diplomatic rumours that Paris had qualms about both Turkish and Israeli entry. Israel is the biggest contributor to CERN outside the member states. Israel is already in several large European scientific organisations, including the Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg and the Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble. It has an association agreement with the EU, like other Mediterranean states, but attempts to upgrade it have been postponed by European Parliament objections to Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. Israel has also been the target of boycotts by British and other academics. CERN membership would strengthen its EU ties as 18 of the members are EU states. The council could decide on Friday to start the accession procedure, which takes up to five years, or postpone a decision until the new year.
Armenia yesterday threatened to walk away from a landmark deal to establish ties with Turkey if Ankara continues to link the agreement with the dispute over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Kara-bakh region. “Armenia is prepared to honor its international commitments and we expect the same from Turkey,” President Serzh Sarkisian said during a press conference with his Latvian counterpart Valdis Zatlers. “If Turkey drags out the ratification process, Armenia will immediately make use of possibilities stemming from international law. I have instructed relevant state bodies to prepare amendments to our laws pertaining to the signing, ratification and abrogation of international agreements,” Sarkisian said. Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols in October on establishing diplomatic ties and reopening their shared border in a deal hailed as a historic step toward ending decades of hostility stemming from WW I-era massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Neither country’s parliament has yet ratified the agreements amid nationalist opposition and objections from Turkish ally Azerbaijan. Turkish officials have repeatedly said the agreements will not be ratified without progress in Armenia’s dispute with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Macedonia will not change its constitutional name nor it will accept any solution in a name row with Greece which could violate and harm its national identity, President George Ivanov said Thursday. "Macedonia will not change its Constitution in order to change its constitutional name," said Ivanov. On Tuesday, EU nations pushed back a decision on opening membership talks with Macedonia amid persistent Greek opposition to the name of the ex-Yugoslav republic. After talks between European foreign ministers on Monday, the 27 EU nations agreed a compromise text that would leave a decision on opening talks to the first half of 2010, when the Spanish will hold the rotating EU presidency. Ivanov said that Macedonia "will not submit to any pressure in order to give up its right to self identity." "Our red line in talks with Greece is not based on any nationalism, caprice, show of force or irrational demands, but on basic civil rights," Ivanov said. He insisted that Skopje "will not accept any solution" for an almost two-decade long row with Athens over its name "which will violate and harm Macedonia's national and language identity." Greece has opposed international recognition of its northern neighbour under the name Macedonia since the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991. Athens considers the name Macedonia part of its Greek heritage because a northern Greek province has the same name. It already blocked Skopje's membership of NATO last year. United Nations-led negotiations on the name row have proved fruitless. Macedonia has been an official EU candidate nation since December 2005 but has not yet begun any of the detailed negotiations required prior to membership.
The nine-day hearing before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Kosovo case ended this Friday in The Hague. The case was sent to the court by the UN General Assembly last fall at Serbia's request, and is asking the judges to give their advisory opinion on the legality of the Kosovo Albanian unilateral proclamation of independence. On the last of the hearings, representatives of Vietnam and Venezuela defended Serbia's position that the proclamation was in violation of international law. Vietnam's representative Nguyen Thi Hoang Anh said that UNSCR 1244 is binding for all UN member states and that it represents a basis for the solution to the Kosovo problem. This resolution confirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SRJ) and Serbia, and determines that Kosovo can have broad autonomy, but not the status of an independent state, she argued. Nguyen emphasized that Resolution 1244 envisages that a final solution to the status of Kosovo can be achieved solely through a negotiating process, with agreement from both sides, and that only the UN Security Council can determine when this process has been completed. Addressing the claims heard in the court that the "people of Kosovo" had a right to self-determination, and therefore independence declaration, the Vietnamese representative said that this principle is not dominant compared to the bases of international law, and listed those as preservation of sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries. Venezuela's representative Alejandro Fleming addressed the ICJ judged today to say that the self-determination principle applies only to colonies, while Kosovo has never been either a colony or an independent state. The (ethnic) Albanian population of Kosovo enjoys all minority rights within Serbia, and there is no basis for independence to be declared, he stated. Fleming went on to say that former UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari's appraisal that all possibilities to arrive at a solution through negotiations had been exhausted could also not be considered a basis to make the declaration, nor could his recommendation that Kosovo should become independent, "in order to strengthen the stability in the region". How could it be that negotiations can cause instability, but not a decision made by one side which was dissatisfied during the negotiations, Fleming wondered. According to the Venezuelan representative, Resolution 1244 calls for reaching a political solution and excludes any possibility for Kosovo to secede, since that would violate Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity. At the end of today's sitting, judges Abdul Koroma, Mohammed Bennouna and Augusto Cancado Trindade asked the participants in the hearing to send written answers to the court by Dec. 22 regarding the claims heard during the proceedings that international law does not prohibit secession, as well as those regarding the promises made by the participants in Kosovo's 2007 parliamentary elections that they would declare independence, and the provisions of the 1999 Rambouillet agreement. Serbia argued before the court that the ethnic Albanian proclamation was in violation of international law, and was joined in this stance by Russia, China, Cyprus, Romania, Spain, Argentina, Vietnam, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Bolivia and Brazil. The Kosovo Albanian representatives, who took part in the proceedings as "the authors of the unilateral declaration of independence", argued to the contrary and were supported by UK, U.S., Albania, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Holland, Austria, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Bulgaria, Jordan, and Croatia. That decision is expected by mid-2010 at the latest. The trascript from today's sitting is available here. All transcripts from the nine days of the proceedings can be found here.
Monks of the Holy Mount Athos detected spiritual threat in identification numbers of social protection (AMKA) given to Greek citizens. “This number is given personally to each citizen for his or her entire life. In fact, a personality is diminished, degraded, turned into a number, becomes a numeric, a thing!” monks of some Athos monasteries said in their statement conveyed to Interfax-Religion on Wednesday. The monks arrived at a conclusion that these plastic cards with identification numbers “will be connected with number 666.” According to them, AMKA represents unified identification number of an employee for insurance and medical treatment, which is “unique for each citizen and will accompany him all his life.” This number “will be compulsory, without it a citizen will be deprived of his rights for permanent work, social insurance, medical treatment, pensions, privileges, benefits,” the statement reads. The Athos monks required to preserve instruments of social protection existed before, including traditional health passports.