Subject: News I, 18/08/93
From: zarros@turing.scs.carleton.ca (Theodoros Sp. Zarros)

        Athens News Agency Bulletin, August 18, 1993       
        ============================================

	Hellespont, 18/8/93 (ANA -K. Christodoulou).- About 1,000
ethnic Greeks evacuated from Georgia's Abkhazia province to
escape civil strife are scheduled to arrive in Alexandroupolis
early this morning. The evacuees began the 55-hour sea journey
on Sunday, when they boarded the cruise liner "Viscountess"
which had delivered humanitarian aid to the region. They will be
greeted by Foreign Under-secretary Virginia Tsouderou and
National Defence Under-secretary Ioannis Stathopoulos.

	About half the evacuees will disembark in Alexandroupolis. The
rest will be transferred to Volos. The Pontian Greeks will be
housed temporarily in camps near refugee reception centres set
up at Elassona and Olympus before being transferred to permanent
settlements in Thrace. The evacuation was code-named Operation
Golden Fleece after the Greek myth about Jason and the Argonauts
who sailed to Colchis (present-day Georgia) to steal the fleece
of a fabulous ram. It is being co-ordinated by the foreign ,
national defence and merchant marine ministries. 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, 18/8/93 (ANA) - Greece yesterday lodged a double
protest with the German government over last week's racist
attacks against Greeks by a gang of neo Nazis in an eastern
German town, the foreign ministry said in an announcement. It
said one protest had been lodged with the federal government's
deputy foreign minister by Greece's ambassador in Bonn and a
second demarche had been made to the secretary general of lower
Saxony's foreign ministry by the Greek consul general in Berlin.

	In the protests, Athens expressed its "abhorrence and deep
regret" over the attacks, the announcement said. It said that
both German officials had voiced their "deep regret" over the
incident, condemning the "abhorrent violence and other similar
activities, particularly when the victims are citizens of a
European Community member-state". It added that they also
pledged to punish those responsible for the attack.

	Last Thursday, a gang of 10 neo-Nazis using heavy tools
attacked three Greek men in the eastern town of Hoyerswerda,
scene of one of the ugliest racist attacks in post-war Germany.
One of the men suffered a severe concussion, another a fractured
skull and a third had facial injuries. The ministry said the
three men had been visited at the hospital by the Greek consul
general. The local prosecutor in Hoyerswerda said Thursday that
eight members of a neo-Nazi gang aged between 20 and 39 years
had been arrested for the attack. On Friday, a state prosecutor
in Bautzen said four neo Nazis alleged to have led the attack on
the Greek men had been charged with grievous disturbance of the
peace.



      Athens, 18/8/93 (ANA) - CSCE High Commissioner for National
Minorities Max van der Stoel is scheduled to visit Athens next
week to brief the government on his recent fact-finding mission
to check whether Tirana was respecting the rights of the
thousands of ethnic Greeks in Albania, the foreign ministry said
yesterday. It said Mr. van der Stoel was scheduled to meet with
Foreign Minister Michalis Papaconstantinou on August 24. The
CSCE official will also be received by Prime Minister
Constantine Mitsotakis, the ministry said.