The President of the Republic Mr.Nicos Anastasiades attended this afternoon the speech of the President of Ukraine Mr.Volodymyr Zelensky before the House of Representatives via teleconference.
After the speech, leaving the plenary session of the Parliament, and in response to a journalist's remark that the President of Ukraine in his speech did not condemn Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, the President of the Republic said that "this is not what we expected today.
Of course it should have been, I want to be blunt and unequivocal, (but) what we expected today is to hear what the Ukrainian people are suffering now, but what we suffered in 1974.
We are disturbed by the fact that there was not any mention of it. The principles of law do not distinguish between states and the rights of some are violated but the rights of others are ignored.
What we have done is our duty to international legality. If there are others with more flexible consciences or who can tolerate similar acts as long as they themselves are not affected, this is completely alien to the principles governing a European country and especially a country that has experienced and is still experiencing to this day the suffering of an invasion that was staged or justified on exactly the same arguments and on the same, unfortunately, non-existent facts."
Asked to comment on the absence of AKEL MPs from the plenary chamber of the Parliament during Zelenski's speech, the President said "I am not here to comment or make political remarks. It is the right of each power to behave (as it wishes), the people judge."
Asked if the Cypriot government will remain faithful to its principled positions on the Ukrainian issue, the President replied "of course. Is there any doubt?"
Asked if there is a possibility of revoking passports of Russian oligarchs, the President said that "the Council of Ministers today authorized the Minister of Interior to proceed with the process of revoking four of the 850 on the EU sanctions list. The rest (on the list), who have passports, have not received the relevant passport from the Republic of Cyprus."
In addition, asked to comment on today's report by US Assistant Secretary of State Ms Victoria Nuland on the EastMed pipeline, President Anastasiades said that "I have the impression that, and we have said this repeatedly, this will be decided after the feasibility study.
What we are seeing today is a need to study alternative sources of supply to the EU, based on the new data. Therefore, it will be decided by the studies, by the amount of gas to be supplied and therefore I don't think it was ruled out."
Asked if there is a window of opportunity since there is strong interest in finding alternative sources of energy supply, the President noted that "that is exactly what I have said."
Finally, asked if during their meeting today he discussed with Ms. Nuland the readiness of the US to give F16s to Turkey, the President said "no. I focused my attention on the Cyprus issue, what should be done, what should not be done, and not on the policies that America has towards third countries. Of course, I did not fail to point out that I would like to see the same determination that they show towards Russia, and towards a country which, in fact, refuses to implement the decisions, the sanctions taken by either NATO or the EU, of which Turkey is a candidate country."
(PM/IK)
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