Cyprus News Agency: News in English, 06-09-28

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From: The Cyprus News Agency at <http://www.cyna.org.cy>

CONTENTS

[01] CYPRUS - OIF

[02] AIR CRASH - TESTIMONY

[01] CYPRUS - OIF

Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos is represented at the Summit by Foreign Minister George Lillikas, who expressed Cyprus wish to support the activities of the International Organization of Francophonie, at the linguistic, cultural, and political level.

Addressing the Summit, Lillikas noted that Cyprus is committed to working closely with its new partners at the international fora for cultural pluralism and development of the countries suffering from injustice and follow along with them a policy of peace and promotion of democracy in the world.

In a world of many conflicts, he said, francophonie is a carrier of the message of tolerance and solidarity, cooperation and emancipation, dialogue and understanding.

He further expressed his sincere thanks to the heads of states and governments of the International Organization of Francophonie, who showed their support to the people of Cyprus, by accepting them in their family.

Lillikas stressed that history has created ties between Cyprus and the French culture and language which is the second obligatory foreign language school taught in Cyprus` schools.

Concluding, Lillikas expressed the belief that if the values uniting the states of the International Organization of Francophonie turn into will and joint political action, they can contribute to peace, stability and development in the whole modern world.

[02] AIR CRASH - TESTIMONY

Testifying today before the Commission of Inquiry into the causes of the air crash, Louis, who is working with Helios since March 2004, said that engineers of the company had repeatedly tried to fix the problem by changing spare parts but did not manage to spot the cause of the problem.

He noted that the decompression problem is common in Boeing planes and does not affect the security of the flights, as long as the pilots have the experience to deal with it, adding that in his previous job this phenomenon used to appear three times a month.

Louis described an incident during which the problem of decompression appeared in his presence, at the Boeing which crashed, noting that he operated the system on the manual position because the system was unstable, noting that as an experienced co-pilot by taking this decision he had more work to do.

During todays procedure, Michael Agisilaou, who worked as coordinator at the Aviation Safety Division from May 2002 until December 2005 said that that Civil Aviation officials signed letters to the director of the Division with comments from British inspectors, without being qualified and without having concluded their training.

Kallis also presented a report by British advisor Andrew Varley dated 27th October 2004 to the Director of the Cypriot Civil Aviation Department (DCA) with complaints for the work of the Department, such as lack of technical personnel.

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