NUGAS - National Union of Greek Australian Students Official Site

Yesterday the United Nations announced that former Foregin Minister Alexander Downer has been formally appointed to a position in Cyprus after his retirement from politics earlier this month.

NUGAS welcomes this appointment of Alexander Downer to the post as the United Nation's special envoy for Cyprus and feels that the Cyprus issue is one of the most important issues all governments should help resolve. We feel that the appointment of Alexander Downer is beneficial to the Cypriot cause, and that he will be a benefical asset to Cyprus.

We hope that the former foreign minister much success in his new career, and look forward to reconcilliation in Cyprus.

On Sunday and Monday, NUGAS National President Jack Miriklis and National Secretary Peter Doukas represented NUGAS at the Australian Hellenic Council Conference in Canberra.

NUGAS and the AHC discussed many issues such as the illegal occupation of Cyprus, a resolution to the naming issue between Greece and Skopje, the lack of Greek language programming on SBS as well as the ways to promote and raise awareness on studying Greek in all levels of schooling.

The meeting was attended by various Greek organisations around Australia, as well as the High Commissioner of Cyprus and the Greek Ambassador to Australia. A reception and dinner was held for the delegates by the Greek Ambassador at his official residence, where many got the chance to discuss in detail with both the High Commissioner and the Ambassador concerns and ambitions of their respective organisations, as well as official Government policies of both nations relating to the issues raised in the meeting.

The Monday was taken up with all delegates going to Parliament House, to lobby politicians of both major parties on the issues raised in the meeting. Both parties were highly interested in helping the Greek community, with many MPs such as Petro Georgiou of Kooyong (Lib, Vic) and Steve Georganas of Hindmarsh (ALP, SA) promising to delve deeply into these matters and to raise our concerns both within their parties as well as in parliament.

Both Labor and Liberal leaders such as Dr. Brendan Nelson (Lib) and Stephen Conroy (ALP) expressed their desire for a peaceful resolution to the Macedonia question, and stated that their policy relating to the issue is that both the Australian Government and the Opposition will continue to call the country by its UN-designated provisional reference of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) until Athens and Skopje can reach a mutual agreement on the dispute.

NUGAS looks forward to working and meeting with the Government and the Opposition in the future on issues important to Greek-Australian students, and also thanks and applauds its fellow members in the Greek community who came together to lobby for issues of importance and relevance to everyone in the Greek community.