Rice calls for more effort on Cyprus issue
Cyprus and Turkey need to do more to improve their relations, said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Athens yesterday as youths clashed with police and smashed shops in the city center to protest her visit. Rice arrived in Athens in the early hours of the morning and later held talks with Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis and Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. Speaking at a news conference after the meetings, Rice said the onus was still on Ankara and Nicosia to improve their cooperation. «We do believe that there needs to be good will and effort by Turkey but there also needs to be good will and effort by Cyprus,» said Rice, who later flew to Ankara for more talks. Rice urged Nicosia to do all that it could to end the economic isolation of Turkish Cypriots. The US diplomat caused some controversy when she referred to the Turkish-occupied part of the island as «northern Cyprus.» PASOK criticized Bakoyannis for not intervening to correct Rice. Bakoyannis said Greece had made «brave» efforts to improve its relations with Turkey but had been disappointed by Ankara’s response. «Sadly, we often face provocations that are not in the spirit of good-neighborly relations or in line with Turkey’s aspirations of full EU membership,» she said. In an interview with a Kathimerini reporter and three other journalists, Rice praised Greece for being «a very active and constructive partner» in the Balkans and said it had a role to play in «continuing the process of democratization» in the region. Rice was the first US secretary of state to visit Greece since George Shultz in 1986. Some 2,500 protesters took part in two marches, organized by anti-war organizations and the Communist Party, in central Athens to voice their opposition to Rice’s visit. At least nine people were detained after a few dozen protesters began throwing Molotov cocktails at police, setting fire to cars and smashing shop windows. Riot police used tear gas to disperse the suspected anarchists. By last night one of those detained had been arrested.
