Subject: News I, 14/08/93 From: zarros@turing.scs.carleton.ca (Theodoros Sp. Zarros) Athens News Agency Bulletin, August 14, 1993 ============================================ Athens, 14/8/93 (ANA) - The foreign ministry yesterday summoned the Albanian ambassador to protest police violence against the ethnic Greek minority in Albania. "Following instructions from Foreign Minister Michalis Papaconstantinou, the ministry's director of Balkan Affairs, Ambassador Petros Angelakis, summoned the Albanian ambassador to whom he made a strong representation over yesterday's violent attacks against the ethnic Greek minority in Albania", the ministry said in a statement". "The Albanian ambassador's initial reaction was that the incidents could not have occurred as portrayed by the media. However, he assured Mr Angelakis that he would ask Tirana to provide all necessary information so that he may respond to the Greek side", the statement said. Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Papaconstantinou in a statement on Thursday said the ministry had received information that Albanian police had attacked gatherings of ethnic Greeks in Agioi Saranda and Delvinou held to discuss the minority's rights in light of a visit by CSCE Commissioner for National Minorities Max van der Stoel. Foreign ministry official said Albanian security officers stormed a coffee shop in the southern village of Phoenix on Thursday and beat up a number o ethnic Greeks because they were listening to a tape with Greek songs. CSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities Max van der Stoel yesterday ended a four-day visit to Albania to check whether Tirana was respecting the rights of thousands of ethnic Greeks in Albania. The Albanian foreign ministry said Mr van der Stoel had met with ethnic Greeks and Albanian officials and is preparing a report which he will present to the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. Leaders of Albania's ethnic Greek minority have accused the government of depriving ethnic Greeks of religious and educational rights but Tirana has denied the charges. Greek -Albanian relations reached a critical point in late June following the expulsion of a Greek Orthodox cleric from Gyrokastr and assaults by Albanian police against ethnic Greeks protesting against the expulsion. Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis on July 14 set six conditions for a "rapid and substantial" improvement in Greek- Albanian relations, including the return of all church property confiscated by Albania's former communist regime, the establishment of ethnic Greek minority schools and an end to the harassment and arbitrary dismissal of ethnic Greeks from public service positions. Mr van der Stoel, who ended his second fact-finding mission to Albania on July 29, returned to Albania earlier this week with two specialists in ethnic minority rights to complete his investigation. The ethnic Greek minority in Albania is estimated at over 400,000. Belgrade, 14/8/93 (ANA) - Turkish press coverage of Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos' visit to Serbia was "bigoted" and "inexcusable", diplomatic and church sources said yesterday, citing Turkish reports that accused the Patriarch of "Papal" behaviour and "ignoring Turkish foreign policy in order to achieve the Phanar's leadership over world Orthodoxy". The same sources said that throughout his visit the Ecumenical Patriarch had demonstrated that the "path of co-operation and solidarity among the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans did not necessarily pass through the road of nationalism". They added that the attacks in the Turkish press, which referred to the Ecumenical Patriarchate as a "den of intrigue", reflected only the views of Turkish extremists. Athens, 14/8/93 (ANA) - Refugee reception centres have been set up at Olympus and Ellasona to receive ethnic Greeks evacuated from Georgia under Operation Golden Fleece. Government sources yesterday said that the first 340 Pontian Greeks are expected to arrive at Olympus next week on a Greek freighter that set sail from Piraeus Thursday for the Black Sea port of Sukhumi. They said an estimated 10,000 ethnic Greeks were expected to be evacuated by sea and air. The Pontians will be housed in camps near the reception centres for three months before being transferred to permanent settlements in Thrace. Operation Golden Fleece, named after the Greek myth about Jason and the Argonauts who sailed to Colchis (present-day Georgia) to steal the fleece of a fabulous ram, is being co-ordinated by the foreign ministry. The mission was mounted to evacuate Pontian Greeks from the fighting in breakaway Abkhazia and deliver humanitarian aid. The ethnic Greek community, 1.9 per cent of Georgia's 5.5 million population, traces its ancestry back to the ancient kingdom of Pontus on the north-eastern shores of the Black Sea. Athens, 14/8/93 (ANA) - Greece has lodged a protest with the German government over Wednesday's attack by 10 neo-Nazis against three Greek men in the eastern town of Hoyerswerda, the foreign ministry said yesterday. "Every effort must be made (to stop the activities) of these marginal violent groups who give such a repugnant face to the countries of Europe", foreign ministry spokesman Andreas Papaconstantinou said. The local prosecutor in Hoyerswerda said Thursday that eight members of a neo-Nazi gang aged between 20 and 39 years had been arrested after using heavy tools to attack the Greek workers at a taxi stand. One of the men suffered a severe concussion, another a possible fractured skull and a third had facial injuries. The prosecutor's office said the arrested youths had given hatred of foreigners as their motive. Herbert Mayer, a state prosecutor in Bautzen, yesterday said four neo Nazis alleged to have led the attack on the Greek men had been charged with grievous disturbance of the peace. The foreign ministry said the Greek ambassador had lodged a protest over the attack with the German foreign minister and that the Greek council in Berlin had also been instructed to lodge a protest with the authorities in the eastern state of Saxony. Meanwhile, the German DPA news agency said a special anti-rightwing violence task squad had been called in Thursday to investigate the attack. It said that in Wednesday's incident, the right-wing youths had shouted insults at a group of 10 Greek workers on their way to a construction site before setting upon one of the men, badly beating him. When two of the Greeks tried to help their compatriot, the German youths attacked them and chased them into a nearby building before police could intervene. Hoyerswerda gained notoriety in September 1991 for some of the worst anti-foreigner violence ever seen in post-war Germany when right-wing youths hurled petrol bombs and stoned at a hostel for foreigners, injuring 30 people. Athens, 14/8/93 (ANA) - The government will continue with the implementation of its policies, Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis said yesterday, when asked to comment on parliament's approval of a bill partially privatising the Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation (OTE). "It was an important piece of legislation aimed in the right direction", he said. "The government will continue to implement its policies undeterred". Parliament on Friday passed a bill allowing the government to sell 49 per cent of the state-run phone company. Thirty-five per cent of OTE shares will be sold to a strategic investor, who will also assume the company's management, 10 per cent of OTE shares will be sold on the Athens Stock Exchange and the remaining four per cent will be distributed free to OTE employees. Describing the final bill as "flawless", Mr Mitsotakis said all amendments introduced during the course of the four-day parliamentary debate had been arrived at through dialogue. "This is the value of democracy", he said, adding that in the end only those with ulterior motives or philosophically opposed to privatisation had opposed the legislation. Main opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) leader Andreas Papandreou yesterday warned prospective investors that any agreement signed by the government on OTE's sale would be annulled if his party came to power. "We will cancel the agreement", he said at a dinner in his honour hosted by local party officials in Lasithi, Crete. Athens, 14/8/93 (ANA) - Two Turkish nationals have been arrested for smuggling two kilos of heroin into Greece, police said yesterday. They said farmer Hilmi Yilmaz, 57, and construction worker Husein Ergin, 41, had been arrested in the village of Kissario near the border town of Didymoticho where they had been waiting for a Greek contact to whom they had arranged to sell the heroin for eight million drachmas. Police said that a third Turk waiting at a distance had opened fire on police as they moved in to arrest the two men after the Greek, identified only as "Yiorgos", did not show up for the meeting. The third man escaped over the Turkish border, police said. Police suspect the men are part of a drug smuggling ring operating along the Greek-Turkish and Bulgarian-Turkish borders.