George Vassiliou, 'eternal optimist' president who led Cyprus into the EU, dies at 94

FILE PHOTO: Cypriot President George Vassiliou speaks at a press conference about improving trade relations between Cyprus and Egypt in Cairo on November 22, 1989. REUTERS/Aladin Abdel-nabi 90001033/File Photo

NICOSIA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Former Cyprus President George Vassiliou, who died on Wednesday aged 94, once risked ‌arrest in Cold War Hungary smuggling a banned political manifesto past the Iron Curtain.

In 1956, as Soviet tanks crushed a popular uprising in Budapest, he agreed to carry to the West the document, one of the anonymous "Hungaricus" pamphlets that gave the outside world its ‌first uncensored accounts of the crackdown.