VZCZCXYZ0003
OO RUEHWEB

DE RUEHTH #1463/01 2521433
ZNR UUUUU ZZH (CCY ADADE78E TOQ1950-695)
O R 091433Z SEP 09
FM AMEMBASSY ATHENS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0650
INFO EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS ATHENS 001463 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
C O R R E C T E D COPY CAPTION 
DEPT PASS TO EUR/OHI, EUR/RPM, DRL/IRF 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM KIRF KISL GR
SUBJECT: Greek MFA on Jewish Cemetery Issues, Athens Mosque 
 
¶1.  (SBU) SUMMARY: On August 28, the director of the Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs (MFA) E2 Directorate for Religious and 
Ecclesiastical Affairs, Amb. Christodoulos J. Lazaris, described 
GoG actions to address increased anti-Semitic vandalism, the 
current status of property restitution negotiations with the 
Thessaloniki Jewish community over their cemetery, and delays in 
the construction of Athens' first official mosque.  On vandalism at 
the Jewish cemetery in Ioannina, Lazaris said the government had 
increased police patrols and planned to add security lighting to 
the cemetery perimeter.  Lazaris said a property restitution 
agreement with the Thessaloniki Jewish community had been held up 
by a new legal advisor in the Ministry of Finance (MinFin), but 
that Minister of Foreign Affairs Dora Bakoyiannis and Minister of 
Economy and Finance Giannis Papathanasiou were discussing how to 
overcome this obstacle; Lazaris hoped to see progress within 30-45 
days.  On the Athens mosque, Lazaris noted that bureaucratic 
wrangling was not the only delaying factor--the government had 
realized that constructing a mosque would raise other delicate 
questions, such as which imam to choose, how to prevent conflicts 
between the different Muslim immigrant communities, and how to 
prevent the mosque from being used by religious extremists.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
GoG Condemns Ioannina Jewish Cemetery Vandalisms 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Lazaris said government officials at all levels of the 
Greek government had unequivocally condemned the 2008 and 2009 
vandalism of the Ioannina Jewish cemetery.  In addition to FM 
Bakoyiannis' June 17 statement, during a memorial ceremony for 
Greek survivors of the Holocaust, that the Ioannina vandalisms 
evoked "revulsion and strong disapproval" in all Greeks, Lazaris 
noted that on July 10 Minister of Interior Prokopis Pavlopoulos 
condemned the acts in a press conference--as did prefect and 
city-level officials for Ioannina. 
 
 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Describing the government response, Lazaris said local 
police had increased patrols around the cemetery in January, after 
a wave of anti-Semitic incidents in Greece following Israeli 
military action in Gaza, but reduced them in May when no more 
incidents occurred.  (NOTE:  The cemetery was vandalized again in 
June.)  He attributed the acts to "young punks" and said that the 
police were looking for suspects.  Lazaris also stated that the 
Ministry of Public Works planned to add security lighting and clear 
a more secure buffer space on the cemetery's perimeter by the end 
of the year. 
 
 
 
¶4.  (U) The text of Pavlopoulos' July 10 statement:  "The 
Government condemns these incidents, in no uncertain voice, 
expressing the indignation of Greek society as a whole.  Such 
incidents brutally insult fundamental and time-honored values of 
our nation, including democracy, freedom of religion, respect for 
diversity and honoring the dead."  (NOTE:  FM Bakoyiannis' June 17 
statement can be found by searching the www.mfa.gr 
  website.) 
 
 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
MinFin Legal Dispute Further Delays Thessaloniki Restitution Deal 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Lazaris said that property restituQon negotiations 
between the Jewish community of Thessaloniki and a MinFin-appointed 
committee over the Thessaloniki Jewish cemetery would be delayed 
due to objections raised by a new MinFin legal advisor.  MinFin and 
the MFA had made a lot of progress towards a solution as of June, 
Lazaris said, with the Jewish community of Thessaloniki expressing 
willingness to accept a cash settlement rather than a land swap. 
(Lazaris explained that a land swap would have been too politically 
sensitive in the aftermath of the Vatopedion monastery property 
swap scandal.)  However, in August a new legal advisor at MinFin 
raised what seemed to be largely process-related objections to the 
settlement, saying that cash settlements required a different legal 
process from a property swap--and the MinFin committee had to start 
its paperwork over from scratch.  Deputy FM Theodore Kassimis had 
"gone ballistic" at hearing this news, and FM Bakoyiannis and 
Minister of Finance Papathanasiou called each other twice earlier 
in August to work out a solution.  Lazaris said he hoped for 
additional progress within 30-45 days. 
 
 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
GoG Moving More Slowly, Carefully on Athens Mosque 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Poloff asked Lazaris why construction on the Athens 
mosque had been delayed since 2002, given the fact that legislative 
approval for the buiQing already existed, an appropriate site on 
Ministry of Defense (MOD) Navy land had been located, and the 
government and Greek Orthodox Church were publicly supportive. 
Lazaris said one obstacle was the MOD's unwillingness to pay to 
relocate naval structures from the site, even though the site only 
had a few barracks and was used primarily to store unused 
machinery.  Also, officials had recently realized that operating 
the mosque would be more complicated and politically delicate than 
initially thought.  Each Muslim immigrant community already had its 
own unofficial imams with differing religious views, Lazaris said, 
and selecting an imam for the official mosque would be a sensitive 
process fraught with sectarian, theological, and legal problems. 
Another question was how to prevent religious extremists from 
infiltrating or gaining influence in the mosque.  Due to these 
concerns, Lazaris said, the Greek government was unlikely to move 
quickly on starting mosque construction. 
 
 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
Comment:  Implications of a PASOK Government 
 
---------------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶7.  (SBU) With early national elections scheduled for October 4 and 
the center-left Pan-Hellenic Socialist Alliance (PASOK) party 
leading in the polls, some members of the Muslim community are 
quietly hoping for more progress on the mosque and Muslim cemetery 
issues under a PASOK government.  Numerous representatives of 
Muslim community groups and immigrant associations have indicated 
that they see PASOK as more sympathetic to migrants' issues, and 
PASOK-linked Greek NGO representatives also foresee progress on 
Muslim outreach and integration efforts under a PASOK government. 
Given that the current impasse on the mosque may be an issue of 
bureaucracy, though, political will from the next government will 
be required--and Post will continue pressing GoG interlocutors on 
the importance of these issues. 
 
 
 
¶8.  (SBU) On the Thessaloniki Jewish cemetery settlement 
negotiations, prospects for a more rapid solution under a PASOK 
government are less clear.  Though negotiations have gone slowly 
with the current New Democracy-led government, high-level officials 
in the Ministry of Finance and the MFA affirmed that the political 
will for a solution existed--and that a resolution was only a 
matter of time.  With a change of government on the horizon, 
however, the Thessaloniki Jewish Community may have to reach out to 
a whole new set of principals--a possible setback in terms of 
political will.  Post will engage key members of any new government 
to keep up the momentum towards a property restitution solution. 
Speckhard