This week
Monday President-elect of Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, to meet with Prime Minister Costas Simitis in Athens. PM Simitis, ministers and officials involved in Athens 2004 to discuss Olympics preparations. Foreign Minister George Papandreou chairs a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. Iraq issue will top the agenda. Interministerial meeting on the formation of a state body to manage airlift missions. Foreign Press Association and Cyprus Embassy host news conference and cocktail where President-elect Papadopoulos will meet the press. At FPA, 23 Academias St at 2.45 p.m. Representatives of the European Parliament’s Committee for Women’s Rights and Equal Opportunities, headed by its president, Anna Karamanou, pay a three-day visit to Turkey to meet with Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomaios to discuss equality of the sexes. Karamanou has proposed breaking the ban on women on Mt Athos. Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Loverdos attends Greece-Lebanon Joint Interministerial Committee meeting in Lebanon. Tuesday UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan due to visit Athens for talks on the Cyprus issue. President Costis Stephanopoulos inaugurates the exhibition «Greece in the Balkan Wars 1912-1913» at Parliament. It will be on show through September. PM Simitis chairs a Cabinet meeting on narcotics. Wednesday UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrives in Cyprus. To Friday. Hospital doctors in Athens stage a work stoppage from 8 a.m. to 12 noon, demanding extra pay. PM Simitis visits Alexandroupolis to inaugurate the new regional hospital. Thursday Public Order Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis to chair a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels on illegal immigration and organized crime. EU Troika to meet with US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Friday Deadline for Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot leaders to agree to solution of island’s division on basis of UN plan. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki holds a two-day conference on «Prospects for a European Constitution.» European Parliament members Dimitris Tsatsos and Ioannis Koukiadis and European Court of Justice Judge Vassilios Skouris will attend. Thessaloniki Documentary Festival opens at the Olympion cinema. To March 9. Athens universities will remain closed and secondary school teachers will stage a three-hour work stoppage to participate in the demonstration at Syntagma Sq in view of Saturday’s informal meeting of EU education ministers in Athens. Saturday EU education ministers hold an informal meeting in Athens. To Sunday. New Democracy central committee to elect party’s Political Council. Athens pharmacists to start charging state-insured patients full price for medicine, as the State has not been paying its promised subsidies. Deadline for street market vendors of manufactured goods to begin using cash registers.
