By Hamza Hendawi
PRESIDENT Clerides is adamant that the S-300 missiles he ordered from Russia be brought to Cyprus to be stored, and not go to Crete as Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis would like, senior government sources said yesterday.
The sources, who had been fully briefed on the outcome of Friday’s talks between the two leaders in Athens, told The Sunday Mail that neither Simitis nor Clerides appeared willing to change position but that both agreed not to publicise their differences.
The two-hour meeting, the sources said, failed to reach a decision and Clerides was told in no unclear terms that Greece, on the grounds of pressing security concerns, was firmly opposed to the missiles being deployed in Cyprus. Instead, they should be stored in Crete as a compromise that would be likely to end Turkish sabre-rattling over the issue.
Speaking to reporters after the talks, Simitis honoured the agreement that his differences with Clerides should not be aired in public. In a thinly- veiled hint that he wanted the missiles stored in Crete, the Greek Prime Minister said it was up to the Cypriots whether the missiles will be sent there.
“There is one principle: Cyprus decides,” he said. “In this case and any other case, the Cyprus government will decide and there will be consultations with Greece beforehand,” said Simitis, credited at home and abroad for a pragmatic approach to foreign policy issues – especially relations with Turkey.
This latest failure to resolve the missiles issue and Clerides’ insistence on continuing the high-stakes brinkmanship he began when he first announced the purchase of the S-300s nearly two years ago pose a serious threat to the island’s security, Western defence experts and analysts told The Sunday Mail.
They also threaten to destabilise the east Mediterranean region and Nato’s southern flank by stoking tension between arch-rivals Turkey and Greece at a time when regional powerhouse Israel has become indirectly involved in the traditional rivalry through its new military alliance with Ankara.
Nato partners Greece and Turkey have come close to war at least twice in the past 11 years. Cyprus, invaded by the Turks in 1974, remains the most likely spark for an outbreak of hostilities between the two.
In this context, the purchase by Cyprus of missiles capable of downing jets flying as far away as the southern parts of Turkey and whose radar equipment intrudes deep into the airspace of Israel, Turkey’s newly-found military partner, have sent shock waves through the area and have not won any friends for the Clerides government.
Buying the missiles may have already cost Clerides the support of friends and, depending on where the missiles end up, has put at risk both his government’s credibility and his own record of 50 years in politics.
“Initially, it was a purely defensive measure to buy the missiles,” said military analyst Aristos Aristotelous. “But political statements surrounding the missiles and the discussions at the time of the presidential election strengthened the popular notion that their arrival is a question of national dignity.”
“Now it is a problem that is far beyond the island. It is a problem for Greece, Turkey, the United States, the European Union and Russia,” he added.
Some observers are convinced that Greece, despite public displays of diplomatic etiquette, will have the final say on the fate of the S-300s.
“Eventually, the Greeks will just have to tell the Cypriots ‘Don’t install the missiles, please’ and the Cypriots will have to comply because Greece is their only real ally,” said Ed Blanche, a British analyst who writes on the Middle East for the authoritative Jane’s Defence Weekly.
Speaking to the Mail, the Beirut-based Blanche said Greece’s displeasure with Clerides’ insistence on continuing the missiles bluff arises from serious security concerns.
Turkey’s display of muscle-flexing that forced Syria to back down over allegations that it supported Kurdish rebels, Ankara’s growing military ties with Israel and its undiplomatic handling of its quarrel with Italy over the extradition of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan are all evidence of an ominously aggressive mood in Turkey’s powerful military, he said.
“Turkey’s alliance with Israel in particular has given Greece something to worry about. It is a marriage between the two most powerful non-Arab nations in the area,” said Blanche, who lived in Cyprus for nearly a decade before moving to Beirut in 1996.
“Buying the missiles would seem to be a very clumsy negotiating toy,” said Ian Kemp, Jane’s editor.
Blanche, Kemp and Jane’s Military Editor Christopher Foss, who also spoke to The Sunday Mail from his home in Britain, were in agreement that the missiles, if deployed, would give the island’s National Guard quite a punch.
“The missiles will make the island much more defendable,” said Foss. “They will give the Cypriots a very effective air defence system and will be a major factor in the case of an outbreak of hostilities,” agreed Kemp.
With a range of 160 kilometres and radar which can accurately detect aerial movements 300 km away, the missiles are without a doubt the perfect choice for a country with no air force, the Jane’s experts said.
Turkey has repeatedly threatened to destroy the missiles if they are deployed on the island. But its own militant rhetoric on the issue has, say the experts, also boxed Turkey into a corner and left it with little choice but to run the gauntlet of an international outcry, and possible sanctions, when it attacks the missiles if they arrive in Cyprus.
Foss, Jane’s military editor, said crippling the missiles’ radar system would do the job. “Without them the missiles are blind,” he said.
If deployed, he said, they would be difficult to conceal, given their size and the size of the trucks which carry them. “You take them out of their containers and they’ll stick out like minarets all over the place,” he added.
Storing the missiles in Crete, Foss said, poses no serious problems since a missile firing range facility belonging to Nato already exists on the island. “The missiles can remain in their containers, but regular maintenance work must be carried out on the radar and command and control equipment and the trucks and trailers which carry them,” said Foss.
Their storage in Crete, however, poses a serious logistical problem if hostilities break out and there is a need to deploy them in Cyprus.
“You cannot move them without someone noticing,” he said.
