The President of the Coordinated Effort of Hellenes, Andy Manatos, announced that today their group undertook an intensive effort to help top American officials at the White House, State Department, US Senate and House of Representatives better understand the economic crisis of our ally Cyprus and America’s obligation to assist. Manatos said, “The fact that our group has worked closely with these officials for many years, leads us to believe that they will intervene and help ameliorate this Cyprus crisis.”
In a letter, through emails and in telephone conversations, CEH leaders reminded American officials that “Cyprus is always there when our country desperately need it.” They pointed out that:
- “At America’s urging, Cyprus agreed to confiscate munitions headed to Iran and Hamas. They exploded, devastating Cyprus’ infrastructure and costing its economy, which had just previously run a balanced budget for two years, an over $2 billion loss.
- Cyprus’ overwhelming evacuation of 25,000 Americans from Lebanon in 2006 was called “absolutely phenomenal” by our Secretary of State.
- Cyprus valiantly treated America’s injured and dying after the Beirut bombing in 1983, when Turkey refused.
- At America’s urging, Cyprus didn’t veto the EU accession talks for Turkey, a country illegally occupying a third of Cyprus and transferring huge numbers of illegal colonists to alter the country’s demographics.”
CEH also said, “We must be there when Cyprus desperately needs us.” They pointed out, “It costs us nothing to move the IMF to ease up its unprecedentedly draconian Cypriot conditions — asking Cyprus, one of the world’s regional financial centers, to destroy depositors’ confidence and Cyprus’ economy by requiring a large ‘haircut’ of all depositors. The Europeans are going to destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean over pocket change. We are talking about resolving 1.5 banks of modest size – something that the FDIC does as a matter of routine course of business and the IMF and EU are managing to turn this routine exercise into a worldwide geo-political-financial disaster.”
CEH attached an article that clearly explains misconceptions about this issue and the lack of wisdom of this IMF action.
As well, CEH concluded by saying that “pushing Cyprus toward Russia does no good for America or Israel.” The CEH officials signing the letter included Andy Manatos, Phil Christopher, Peter Papanicolaou, Niko Mouyiaris, Mike Manatos and Andy Athens (who passed away just last week and for whom they signed posthumously. It was done to honor Andy Athens, knowing how much he would have wanted to sign this letter)
