Cyprus Mail 25 October 2019 - article by Gina Agapiou
Head of the bicommunal committee on culture, Androulla Vassiliou has said that meetings of the technical committees since the collapse of the talks last summer had been very limited
The foreign minister is expected to contact Britain’s high commissioner in Nicosia over the private sale in a British auction house of an ancient Cypriot vase which former president George Vassiliou gave as an official gift to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
After 1988 when he was president, George Vassiliou had received permission from the antiquities department to give Margaret Thatcher the vase as a state gift, his wife and former EU commissioner for health and education Androulla Vassiliou told the Cyprus Mail on Friday.
But on Wednesday art historian Maria Pafitis announced on Twitter that she had discovered the vase was sold at Christie’s auction house in May 2019 for 6,000 GBP.
“Whilst researching #Cypriot pottery, I came across this bichrome vase that was given by President Vassiliou to Margaret Thatcher. Sold at #Christies in May ‘19, it fetched 6,000 GBP, a price significantly higher than its pre-sale estimates 700-1,000 GBP, due to its provenance #Cyprus,” Pafitis had tweeted.
“I am assuming that her children wanted to sell her possessions after her death and the vase was believed to be part of it,” Vassiliou said. “However, the ancient pottery was not given to her as an individual but should have remained at 10, Downing street.” Thatcher died in 2013.
She added that Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides would be raising the issue with the British high commission in Nicosia.
Vassiliou explained that George Vassiliou secured an export licence from the antiquities department for the vase as according to the antiquities law suggested, no individual is allowed to export antiquities unless they have the relevant licence from the department.
“My husband contacted the antiquities department and they licensed a specific vase that they had multiples of and was not particularly unique to offer as a present to Thatcher,” she said.
In later years, Tasos Papadopoulos, while serving as a president of the republic in 2003 to 2008, revised the antiquities law to specify that the president is entitled to offer Cypriot antiquities as a present to foreign political leaders or the head of international organisations or other persons, after granting an export licence. This altered law is still applied today.
George Vassiliou served as president from 1988 to 1993.
Margaret Thatcher served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990.
