Former Cyprus president has died
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Former Cypriot President George Vassiliou, a successful businessman who helped to energize his divided island’s economy and set it on the road to European Union membership, has died. He was 94.
Vassiliou died Wednesday after being hospitalized on Jan. 6 for a respiratory infection. Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides praised Vassiliou as a leader who became synonymous with the country’s economic prosperity, social progress and push toward modernization.
“Cyprus has lost a universal citizen who broadened our homeland’s international imprint,” Christodoulides said in a written statement.
His wife Androulla, a lawyer who twice served as a European commissioner, posted on X in the early hours Wednesday that her companion of 59 years “slipped away quietly in our arms” in hospital.
When he became president in 1988, Vassiliou lifted hopes that a peace deal with the island’s breakaway Turkish Cypriots was possible after more than a decade of off-again, on-again talks. He swiftly relaunched stalled reunification negotiations with Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash, but they ended at an impasse that continues today.
But Vassiliou succeeded on many other fronts, using his skills as a successful entrepreneur to modernize and expand his county’s economy, even though he had been raised by parents who were pro-communist.
Vassiliou was born in Cyprus in 1931.