Cyprus president refuses to resign, despite nationwide calls

  Cyprus president Demetris Christofias said he will not resign over the findings of an independent inquiry that placed most of the blame for a deadly blast last July on him.
All political parties, apart from his own communist Akel, have called for his resignation while large crowds demonstrated peacefully in front of the presidential palace late on Monday night.
Christofias, feeling isolated after his coalition partners abandoned him months earlier, said that the inquiry overstepped its mandate and that he wouldn’t take the political blame for the explosion at a decaying munitions blast that destroyed the island’s largest power station and killed 13 seamen and firefighters on July 11.
The president had earlier stated that he would accept the findings of the non-binding inquiry and that he would now wait for the Attorney General’s criminal investigation into the case.
Former Defence and Foreign Ministers Costas Papacostas and Markos Kyprianou also took a share of the blame for the events that triggered a crisis leading to speculation that the country could be the fourth recipient of an EU bailout.
"The President of the Republic in this case failed to take elementary measures for the security of Cyprus's citizens. In this case I am not referring just to institutional responsibility. In this case I apportion serious, and very heavy personal responsibility," investigator Polys Polyviou said on Monday.
Polyviou said that from the onset, United Nations inspectors had wanted to view the contents of the 98 containers laden with arms shipped by Iran and headed for Syria in early 2009 that were confiscated by Cyprus authorities. However, he said that communications and responsibilities deteriorated after that, resulting in the poor handling and storage of the shipment, which he described as “highly explosive” from the beginning.
Families of the victims of the blast said they felt justified by the conclusions of the Polyviou inquiry and urged the president “to do the right thing” and resign.