Cypriot Xmas drinkers shocked by police crackdown

NICOSIA, Dec 23 (Reuters) Christmas revellers in wine-producing Cyprus are having to sip slowly this year as police congratulate themselves on a crackdown on drink-driving that has cut road deaths by a sixth this year.

''We have an absolutely zero-tolerance policy for drunk drivers,'' says Angelos Karadjias, deputy head of traffic police.

One pint of beer is enough to put a driver over the legal limit and facing a 460 dollar fine in a fast-track morning-after court.

Cyprus has been producing wine for even longer than its Mediterranean neighbours, and the island's relaxed approach to drinking includes giving toddlers a sip of wine and allowing nightclubs to sell drinks without asking their customers' age.

''They let my daughter go because the cells were over-crowded,'' said one mother who recently got a call at 3 am to pick up her 24-year-old civil servant daughter from the police station. ''She had only had two small glasses of whisky. She was fit to drive but the regulations now put you over the limit with just a glass of beer,'' she said.

Karadjias accepts that it will take time to change habits going back centuries. But ancient Cypriots also knew the danger of over-imbibing -- one classical floor mosaic in western Cyprus shows two individuals, one of them slumped in a drunken stupor.

REUTERS PB PM0928