By Jean Christou
BRITAIN stored nuclear bombs at Akrotiri and had to call in a team of experts to clean up a radioactive leak in 1973, a British report has claimed.
Cyprus said yesterday it would look into the claims by a former British defence official that Britain had stored nuclear weapons at the Western Sovereign Base Area of Akrotiri during the Cold War.
Britain has neither confirmed nor denied the claims. According to the report, based on details leaked by a senior British Ministry of Defence (MoD) official, the Cyprus government was never even informed that the nuclear bombs were being stored at Akrotiri.
The leaked document also shows that the government was similarly kept in the dark when monitors inside the storage building detected leaking radioactive Tritium gas in 1973.
A team of scientists had to be flown out from Britain to deal with the incident.
Government spokesman Christos Stylianides said yesterday the government was unaware of the reports, and was looking into the matter. But Limassol Diko deputy Marios Matsakis said the Cyprus government had asked the British government about such reports on previous occasions.
“The Cyprus government has asked for information and the Brits have said `It’s none of your business’,” Matsakis said. “They (the government) were told it was all part of Britain’s defence system and they refused to confirm or deny. They (the bombs) might even still be here.”
Officials at the British bases did not want to comment on the claims, but High Commission spokesman Piers Cazalet neither confirmed nor denied the reports.
“All we say is that we do not discuss the presence or absence of nuclear weapons at any particular place at any particular time,” Cazalet said.
“There has never been an accident involving a nuclear weapon, which has led to or come anywhere near to leaking or releasing radioactive material.” Similar comments were made by the MoD in London.
According to the report, whose author is nuclear disarmament campaigner Eddie Goncalves, Cyprus was not the only country which Britain used for its nuclear arms programme without informing its government. He claims that Germany and Malta were also victims in a total of some 20 mishaps said to have occurred in Britain and abroad.
In Germany in 1984, a nuclear bomb dropped off the trailer on which is was being transported and bounced twice before ending upside down.
