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President Nicos Anastassiades returned home on Sunday after a three-week absence in New York where he underwent a heart operation at Mount Sinai Hospital to correct his mitral valve.
Having recuperated from the operation, Anastassiades said that he will meet with Acting President and Parliament President Yiannakis Omirou on Tuesday, after which he will chair a Cabinet meeting where he will lay out his plans for major reforms and possibly a national unity government.
In his first statement upon reaching his home in Limassol, the President said, “my return and the strength I have regained have created an opportunity so that we can all create new prospects and a new beginning.”
“On Tuesday, I will also make statements about the state of my health and in general about some plans.”
Among the priorities are changes at the Presidential Palace, where “some new people might arrive and other might leave,” said Government Spokesman Nicos Christodoulides.
In an interview in Sunday’s Phileleftheros, Anastassiades had appealed to all political parties to rise up to the challenge and accept the establishment of a “national unity government”, which Christodoulides said was in response to the national challenges and the Cyprus problem.
Talks with the Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglou were halted last month when Turkey sent its seismic vessel Barbaros into the Cyprus exclusive economic zone (EEZ) to explore for oil and gas deposits and boost’ Ankara’s bid for a share in future resources and revenues, claiming these in the name of the Turkish Cypriot community.
Meanwhile, Spokesman Christodoulides said that the President’s visits to Russia and Israel are expected to take place some time in February.
Cyprus has already embarked on a series of visits to Egypt and Greece to discuss future cooperation in oil and gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean, and wants to include Israel and possibly Lebanon in future discussions.
The mission to Moscow aims to explore prospects for economic cooperation in the face of increasing western pressure for more sanctions against Russia over eh crisis in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, with the fall in global oil prices hampering the Kremlin’s plans.
