The government is prepared to pay up to 89 million euros from the national budget to cotton farmers to make up for lower-than-expected subsidies awarded by the European Commission. Costas Simitis authorized Agriculture Minister Giorgos Drys to ask the Council of Ministers to clear this expenditure. After a Cabinet meeting yesterday, Simitis said Greece would oppose any cuts in aid to southern European countries in favor of the prospective, and poorer, new members from Eastern Europe, saying the EU must find new resources to finance enlargement.

Greece comes out against CAP reform

The Civil Servants Union (ADEDY) and left-wing MPs yesterday criticized a government decision allowing the US Embassy to buy a 5,500-square-foot plot of land, bordering the embassy building but belonging to the Civil Servants' Fund. ADEDY said the sale of the plot to the embassy for 26.4 million euros was «a provocation,» following yesterday's announcement by Environment, Town Planning and Public Works Minister Vasso Papandreou. The price being offered to the embassy is less than a third of the plot's commercial value and at least 5.8 million euros cheaper than its objective value, a Communistdeputy said. The Civil Servants' Fund was told on Monday it had to sell its plot to safeguard the embassy's security. Construction on the plot has been banned for decades since it was classified as a green area.

Chemical tests on the blood of five officers who died in a helicopter accident on Cyprus earlier this month show traces of smoke, suggesting the crash was preceded by a fire aboard the Bell 206, the Cypriot daily Fileleftheros reported yesterday. The laboratory results have been given to a coroner and a team of experts investigating the cause of the accident which resulted in the deaths of the commander of the Cypriot National Guard, the island's air force chief and three Cypriot officers. Eyewitnesses said the Bell 206 was emitting smoke before it crashed into a ravine near Paphos and a used fire extinguisher was found near the crash site, according to the report.

Police in Thessaloniki are seeking two business partners they believe stole up to 300,000 euros by issuing dud checks to local businessmen for products they intended to sell at a profit. Athanassios Yatsoulis, 31, and Georgios Papadopoulos allegedly used checkbooks issued from five different banks - all in Yatsoulis's name - to make mass purchases of various products, knowing that the bank accounts did not have the funds to support the transactions, police said. Yatsoulis ran his firm «Transbalkan» from a warehouse in the city with the help of Papadopoulos before both men went missing in March.

Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Loverdos and Yugoslav Vice President Miroljub Labus met in Thessaloniki yesterday to sign a bilateral agreement approving financial support pledged by Greece for its Balkan neighbor.

A 68-year-old man fatally struck his 63-year-old wife and seriously injured two other women on Wednesday while reversing his car in an attempt to park, the Athens News Agency said yesterday. Dimitris Fotopoulos backed his car into his wife Angeliki, Christina Dimaki, 42, and Sofia Dimaki, 70, after his three passengers got out of the car outside the couple's home in Ellinitsa, Megalopolis, near Tripolis, the ANA said. Fotopoulos's wife died instantly.

A dead sea turtle weighing 600 kilos was hauled into the port of Limassol yesterday after its body became enmeshed in the nets of Cypriot fishermen, the Athens News Agency said. The shell-less creature (Dermochelys coriacea) is the largest form of sea turtle and is not generally found in the Mediterranean, preferring the cold oceans of the north Atlantic, according to Limassol's Department of Fishery and Sea Studies.

A Halkida court yesterday handed down 10-year jail sentences to two Ukrainian nationals, Yuri Gorbachov and Sergiy Srezinkov, who attempted to smuggle 26 Iraqi immigrants into Greece last week. They were arrested after dropping off the migrants on Evia.