Antenna: News in English (AM), 98-02-20

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From: Antenna Radio <http://www.antenna.gr> - email: [email protected]

Last Updated: Friday, 20-Feb-98 10:31:03

CONTENTS

[01] PASOK

[02] Nicholas Burns

[03] Dr Seed

[04] Cyprus-Attilas

[05] Sports

[01] PASOK

Tensions have surfaced over the upcoming party youth conference.

The government asked the youth leaders to postpone Friday's conference, a request that was rejected.

The Pasok leadership issued a statement Thursday night expressing its regret that the youth leaders have decided to go ahead with the conference,

which it calls divisive.

That statement followed Wednesday's efforts to win a postponement. Pasok's political secretariat tried in vain to persuade youth leaders to postpone the conference, which starts Friday, Pasok secretary Kostas Skandalides said the party will distance itself from the proceedings. The government spokesman said the prime minister will not address the conference if forces loyal to the prime minister are not represented there.

Indicative of the climate, while a picture of party founder Andreas Papandreou has been put up at the conference site, there is no picture of prime minister Kostas Simitis.

The conference has become an apple of discord between the so-called modernising, economically- conservative wing of the party, led by prime minister Kostas Simitis; and the traditionalists, who claim to be true to the socialist principles of party founder Andreas Papandreou, and who support defence minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos and education minister Gerasimos Arsenis.

Many of the youth section members are supporters of Tsochatzopoulos, who lost the run off race for the party leadership to moderniser Simitis when Papandreou died in 1996.

Analysts now say that if Tsochatzopoulos attends the conference Friday, it could set off more clashes within the party.

Of interest too, is just how many other Pasok MPs and central committee members will attend the proceedings, and how many local Pasok officials - mayors for example.

Leading cabinet members, among them development minister Vaso Papandreou, environment minsiter Kostas Laliotis, and parliament president Apostolos Kaklamanis said after meeting with youth representatives that the dispute is a time bomb waiting to explode.

Kaklamanis even intimated that leading party members are encouraging the youth section disobedience.

After meeting with the prime minister Thursday, education minister Arsenis, also beaten out of the party leadership by Simitis, said the party youth section should be left to sort out its problems alone.

Negotiations continued at a feverish pace Thursday. But the youth leaders insisted that the congress will start as scheduled.

[02] Nicholas Burns

Nicholas Burns spoke during a visit to the Athens area police headquarters Thursday.

"I am the first American Ambassador...high time we did...we have great confidence in the Greek police.. They protect our embassy". <P Saying there is no room for terrorism in a democratic society, Burns then commented on the cooperation the US has with the Greek police. <P "We are very satisfied with the cooperation we have with the police......very satisfied...we have worked with them for about 20 years...on drug enforcement...terrorism..on issues that concern the US and Greece"

[03] Dr Seed

The controversial physicist from Chicago has plans to set up cloning clinics around the world, including one in Greece.

Physicist Richard Seed told reporters Thursday in

Athens that he will look elsewhere if the United States bans the cloning procedure. President Bill Clinton has urged the US Congress to impose a ban on human cloning.

Seed says, "Cloning may be declared illegal in the United States and any well organized plan must have an alternative offshore location".

The physicist said he plans to set up an international network of cloning centers. The first center is expected to be set up in Tijuana, Mexico.

And he isn't ruling out establishing one in Greece.

"You mean that you think that you may clone a human being in Greece ?

I didn't say that, I just said that elaboration is possible.

Seed, who has no medical degree, no laboratory backing, and little funding, isn't being taken seriously by some of the other scientists at the conference. Many have debunked his claims and are critical of his plans.

Dr. Yuri Verlinsky, a leading geneticist who is in Athens to set up a clinic where doctors will be able to analyze ova before they are implanted during invitro fertilization questions Seed's methods. He says for what he proposes, there are no medical, ethical, religious or scientific reasons.

He adds the problem with Seed is;

"He doesn't have any method..I don't know Dr. Seed ...is a scientist...embryologist..or biologist. I know physicist...graduated from Harvard...used to teach physics...don't know his intentions..the attention of the media...I don't know...saw him once...we live in the same town."

When asked about human cloning Seed said;

How close is human cloning ?

The answer is speculative to that question right now. I said two weeks ago I thought I would produce a human clone in 2.5 years but there is now a cloud over Dolly.

Have you tried the procedure of cloning a human being ?

Not yet on humans.

The problem is financial as we have understood ?

- There are organisation problems.

When asked if he thought Greeks would go for the possibility of human cloning he said;

Ancient Greeks or Modern Greeks?

Ancient Greeks...

Oh, I think so. Ancient Greeks were very liberal, very far thinking and many many Greek minds, yes , I think the ancient Greeks would have cloned on the first opportunity they could, yes!".

But modern Greeks have other ideas. Greece was one of the 19 European nations to sign a treaty last month that said cloning people violated human dignity and was a misuse of science.

[04] Cyprus-Attilas

In previous reports, we've heard Kouchouk talk to Sophia Iordanidou about the brutal invasion of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974. In this final part of his interview, he focusses on the corruption that has ruined his country.

Sophia Iordanidou asked Yialtsin Kouchouk to explain the widespread corruption of Turkey today.

"Professor no one can forget sousourlouk. Politicians, gernerals intellecturals, artists all....with illegal groups of arms, of drugs. Is there a social, historical explanation and are they the same people who led Turks to Cyprus invasion and who want to cut the Aegean to pieces today?" "I wouldn't sya those who invaded Cyprus are the same people. But, that step took us to that stage. Our people and dirty society, a mafia society of murderers. Right now in 2 years time the rulers realised this is a disease - started restoration. But neither Ecevit or Dmeirel - he's the one who did everything. He's responsible for the disease of our society. Ecevit is number 2, Denis Baykal number 3. Now they are ruling. The created this thing; that is why they cannot solve it".

For Kouchouk, the rot has pervaded all of Turkish society. And until it is rooted out, there can be no peace for the Kurds, the Greeks, and the Turkish people.

What is needed first, he says, is an intellectual renaissance - a revival of humanistic ideas. When Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis visited Turkey in 1988, he points out, intellectuals rushed to express their friendship with the Greek people. But times have changed since.

"But right now there is such a chauvinism that all the intelligentsia, all of my friends now they are behind the chauvinism in Turkey".

Despite the climate, Kouchouk is optimistic that the intelligentsia can be shown the light, and begin the struggle against the many-tentacled octopus of filth and corruption.

"In the year 1998 Sousourlouk. It's just part of the octopus. And all its arms are in Cyprus: all black money, all banks, all killers right now go to the field of Raouf Denktash. I'm against Denktash, not for you, but for my people. All the killers, fascists there".

Kouchouk singles out Mehmet Aka, an official at the Turkish-Cypriot interior ministry, as an

example of the corruption. He has ties to the suspect banks in northern Cyprus, which are under investigation by London.

Behind the corrupt officials and businessmen stands the Turkish army. Denktash's power depends on the 30 thousand troops Ankara has stationed in northern Cyprus.

Now, at the age of 62, Yialtsin Kouchouk is dedicated to finding a way to end the reign of corruption and terror, both in Cyprus, and in his native Turkey.

Yialtsin Kouchouk's interview included an eyewitness account of the murder of a Greek- Cypriot woman by the Turkish troops during their August 1974 invasion. Antenna's Evthimios Georgiou went to Cyprus to try to identify the woman.

Kouchouk identifies those responsible for her death in his interview, opening up the possibility of the perpetrators being brought to justice before an international war crimes tribunal.

Stelios Theodoulou is a prosecutor and president of the Cypriot Human Rights committee. He believes that the murder of a Greek-Cypriot woman, witnessed by Yialtsin Kouchouk when he was a lieutenant serving with the invasion forces, and many other barbaric acts committed by the Turks in 1974, constitute crimes against humanity.

Kouchouk relates how a soldier emptied his revolver into the elderly victim's vagina in the village of Tymvros, from which virtually all the inhabitants had fled before the advancing Turkish army.

The shooter, he says, was a 27 year old soldier named Suleiman; he was under the command of a 37 year old captain named Mustapha.

Following Antenna's airing of the interview, the station sent Evthimios Georgiou to Cyprus to find out who the unfortunate woman was.

And it seems there are two possibilities.

It may have been 75-year-old Despina Kosti of Tymvros.

A relative of hers, Andreas Tzaiakouris believes she didn't leave the village because she just didn't want to, or because she thought the Turks would leave her alone.

Christina Savva, aged 50 at the time, and from the nearby village of Afania, might also have been the woman so brutally murdered.

Kouchouk says the victim looked like she had Down's Syndrome; and Savva was mentally handicapped.

Her nephew, Kyriakos Christofis, says she was taken prisoner during the invasion, and hasn't been seen since.

Theodoulou applauds the work of Antenna, work that will be ammunition for his and other organisations if the criminals are ever prosecuted in an international court.

But can Kouchouk's testimony be the basis for a war crime's trial?

The way things are now, explains Theodoulou, the UN security council decide to set up a special court - like that established to try war criminals from the war in Yugoslavia - before there could be any prosecution. And that's a political issue, affected by the interests of the security council members.

But there may be another avenue of recours opened soon. A new international convention is being drawn up, which should be signed sometime around June. It calls for the foundation of a permanent international criminal court, and provides for the prosecution of individuals - people who've executed other people, or given orders for crimes against humanity.

Harris Kyriakides, a legal expert and journalist, first met Yialtsin Kouchouk in London in 1991. The Turkish intellectual was speaking at a conference on Cyprus and the Kurdish problem.

What most impressed Kyriakides was that a Turk was speaking so objectively about his country.

The same year, Kyriakides interviewed Kouchouk, who said that United Nations proposals for Cyprus would amount to Turkey regaining territory for the first time since the Greek Revolution of 1821 against Ottoman rule.

Kouchouk is an admirer of Hellenism, says Kyriakides: During his interview, Kouchouk said Greeks have never understood the greatness of your revolution. It was the first ray of light to break through the darkness of Metternich's Europe. It led to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.

[05] Sports

Kostas Frantzescos tucks a nice goal into the Russian net just 8 minutes into a first half in which the Greek half puts on a clinic.

Greece goes to its bench in the second half, and loses some of its coherence - the Russians equalise in the 66th minute to go away with the tie.

(c) ANT1 Radio 1998

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