Cyprus Latest News Mar08

Cyprus has a brand new president, Demetris Christofias. The former president, Tassos Papadopoulos did not even make it through to the final round of voting, being beaten into third place in the first round by Christofias and the young people's favourite, Ioannis Kasoulides.

The voting was predicted to be so close that over 20,000 Cypriots living abroad were flown back to the island so that they could vote!

The island went crazy when Christofias came first in the second round of voting. The final result waspretty close but predictable after half the Papadopoulos camp threw in their support for the former foreign minister.

With a solution to the Cyprus problem high on the agenda for all candidates, it came as no surprise that as soon as the election results were known, a meeting to reopen the talks with the president of the TRNC (Turkish Republic of Cyprus) was announced for mid March.

Christofias has strong connections with the Turkish Cypriot trade unions and has previously visited the turkish controlled North of the island to visit Mehmet Ali Talat, the TRNC president.

Hopes are therefore high that he is in a strong position to open effective new talks to try to find a solution to the divided island.

But any solution will not be easy to achieve so watch this space.

Whilst we had a fair amount of rain in line with average statistics in February, March has been exceptionally dry. It has only rained twice so far overnight versus an expected rainfall of approximately 9 days.And there is little rain forecast in the forward forecast for the rest of the month.

As a result of what is now being called a DROUGHT, the government has announced the introduction of a quota system. All residents will be allowed a reasonable amount of water up to a certain quota.Then heavy fines will be imposed! But we don't yet know what those will be or when the quota system will start.

In addition, tankers full of water have started to arrive from the Lebanon to help ease the water crisis in Limassol. If you live in the Polis area, don't panic as water supplies here are not as big a problem but it's interesting to hear the locals scepticism about water from the Lebanon - It's " bad" water according to them!

With the Ledra Street opening now imminent, pressure has grown from residents of the Tillyria region to have their crossing open at Kato Pyrgos.

There is therefore HIGH hope that the Pyrgos-Limnitis-Kokkina checkpoint will soon be open too which is GREAT news for anyone living in the Polis area as we will be able to get into Northern Cyprus in only 40 minutes!

We'll keep you informed at CTS news!

That's all from our Cyprus Latest News Mar08.

See you next month

Helen

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