CYPRUS: The Cyprus house of representatives yesterday swore in Mr Tassos Papadopoulos as the fifth president of the 42-year-old Cyprus republic.
Born in 1934 in Nicosia, Mr Papadopoulos trained as a barrister in Britain. On his return to the island he became a sector leader of the Eoka movement during the struggle against British rule. He helped draft the constitution for the new Cyprus republic, which emerged in 1960, but later opposed the Zurich and London agreements defining the communal power-sharing deal and system of guarantees imposed on the new state as the price of freedom.
He stepped on to the Cyprus political stage in 1959 when he was chosen by the republic's first president, Archbishop Makarios, as his youngest minister. At 24 he took up the key interior portfolio, later also serving time in the labour, agriculture and health ministries.
He served until 1976 as an adviser to Mr Glafkos Clerides, (84), now the outgoing president, but then intercommunal negotiator. Mr Papadopoulos became the negotiator until July 1978. During this period he represented Cyprus in recourses to the UN General Assembly and at international conferences.
In 1970, he was elected as a deputy for the Unified Party, soon to be dissolved, then in 1976 he won a seat as an independent. Subsequently, he founded his own political party, the Centre Union, which did not prosper.
He eventually joined the centre-right Democratic Party and was voted into parliament in the 1991 and 1996 elections. After the party's head, former president Spiros Kyprianou, retired in November 2000, Mr Papadopoulos assumed leadership. He served on the National Council, a group of party leaders which advises the president, and chairs the house committee on foreign affairs.
He won the presidential election on February 16th. He heads one of Nicosia's largest and most prestigious law firms, is married to Photini Leventis, the daughter of the late Cypriot-Greek multimillionaire Anastasios Leventis, whose Leventis Foundation is dedicated to the preservation of Cyprus's cultural heritage.
