cyprus-mail.com
By Alexia Saoulli

ASYLUM seekers yesterday launched a hunger strike in a desperate effort to get authorities’ attention.

Immigrant support group KISA president Doros Polycarpou told the Sunday Mail 10 Kurds from Syria decided to stop eating after talks with Interior and Labour Ministry officials broke down.
The immigrants will have been demonstrating exactly two weeks tomorrow. Initially they had been camping out in Nicosia’s Eleftheria Square but on Friday moved to the Red Cross premises.
The asylum seekers want the right to work without limitations, government housing, access to benefits where the right to work is refused, medical and pharmaceutical care, an end to police mistreatment, an end to deportations to countries which persecute them, and genuine examinations by an independent body of each asylum application.

Polycaropu said: “Representatives from various Interior and Labour Ministries’ services came here [to the Red Cross] today and it was agreed that the problems regarding the asylum seekers’ pink slips, medical card and welfare benefits would be dealt with as early as Monday or Tuesday.”
The human rights activist explained a number of asylum seekers whose pink slips were up for renewal had been turned away by immigration officials without examining each case. The officials had promised to look into the matter and assure each asylum seeker whose application was justified would be given a pink slip. They also conceded they would give a medical card allowing the immigrants access to free medical care and benefits as soon as possible.

Last week the Social Services had said these benefits would be given on condition the immigrants returned home.

Polycarpou explained that the problem which remained was the ministries’ refusal to start up direct talks between ministry representatives and the immigrants. Instead they wanted to send a memo round to all ministers telling them to take the matter into consideration.
But although the demonstrators were tired and despite pressures from authorities to pack up and go home, they had not intention of giving up, he added.

Earlier in the day police sent buses to the Red Cross and threatened to forcefully remove the men, women and children from the premises.

“After some time it was agreed that if the men slept outside at night and only the women and children slept indoors then they could stay. They are all allowed inside the building during the day. This was deemed necessary for safety reasons,” Polycarpou said.

Iran Focus– Iran announced on Sunday that it would not suspend its uranium enrichment activities despite an offer of nuclear assistance from Britain, France, and Germany – the EU-3 – if it did so.

“We will not return to the past, that is to say, we will not suspend enrichment”, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi told reporters in Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council have both called on Iran to suspend all enrichment activities, fearing that Tehran may be after the A-bomb.

News agencies reported on Saturday that the five permanent members of the Security Council along with Germany were mulling offering Tehran a package of incentives which included the removal of Iran’s nuclear dossier from the council’s agenda, European assistance in building light-water reactors in Iran, and assurance of nuclear fuel supply for some five years if it agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and cooperate with IAEA inspectors.

The draft which could be adopted as legally binding by the Security Council also threatens Iran with sanctions and travel bans on Tehran’s leaders and those involved in the nuclear program.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European powers have not asked the United States to provide security guarantees to Iran as part of a package the West is preparing to offer the Islamic republic to curb its nuclear programs, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday.

Rice made her remark in a Fox News interview at a time when, according to some diplomats, Europe wants the United States to back some kind of security framework in nuclear talks with Iran despite Washington's insistence it will not provide a security guarantee.

"We haven't been asked to provide security assurances," Rice said.

The United States, which says it is focused on a finding a diplomatic solution to an impasse with Iran, has refused to rule out a military strike to stop what it believes is the country's pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Iran says its programs are peaceful.

Britain, Germany and France have for years been leading fruitless negotiations with Iran, with support from the United States.

After the United States failed this month to get a tough U.N. resolution against Iran for its nuclear programs, Europe agreed to come up with a new package of incentives and threats in the negotiations.

That has meant some diplomats have sought a way of offering a security guarantee to Iran if the country limits its programs. But the idea has been crimped by U.S. reluctance, according to officials from nations involved in the talks.

Even though the United States does not want to offer its own guarantee, Europe may still find a formula that allows for some security pledge to Iran, political analysts have said.