By Jean Christou
PRESIDENT Clerides yesterday confirmed that Britain might in the past have stored nuclear weapons at its bases in Cyprus without informing the government of the fact.
Clerides was speaking after a meeting with British High Commissioner Edward Clay, following revelations from newly released British documents.
The latest documents, released on January 1 under the 30-year rule, reveal that, in 1969, military aircraft based at Akrotiri were carrying nuclear bombs.
A British Defence Ministry document, dated February 18, 1969, states: “The United Kingdom has suggested to member governments of CENTO that their defence rests ultimately on the global nuclear deterrent of which the United Kingdom’s forces in Cyprus are a part.”
The revelation has caused a stir on the island, with some insisting the government ask the British for explanations.
Reports of nuclear weapons at the bases have surfaced on several occasions in recent years, but the reports, mostly from anti-bases groups, have been dismissed.
One report several years ago suggested there had been a nuclear leak in the early ’seventies and that Britain secretly brought in experts to clean it up without informing the Cyprus government.
Clerides said yesterday there was a time when the government did have some indication or information that nuclear weapons were probably on the bases, but “things have changed”.
“The British Bases have never disclosed whether or not they have nuclear weapons and this applies not only for my presidency but also for all previous presidencies,” Clerides told journalists.
“Things have changed since then, because, at that time, nuclear weapons were carried only by aircraft, but now they are not.”
The President insisted that the Cypriot people “were in no danger from any kind of leak”.
Clay was reluctant to answer questions on the issue, and would neither confirm nor deny the report. He did say it was a well-known fact that there was a V Bomber Force on the island in the 1960s. “There is no secret about it,” he said.
Asked if there were nuclear weapons on the bases today, Clay replied: “I think not.”
He admitted the Cyprus government was not informed about the existence or not of nuclear weapons. “This is a British sovereign matter. We do not comment on those things to anybody. That is our practice,” he said
Earlier, government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou said the government had no information on the existence of nuclear weapons on the bases.
“From time to time in decades past there were specific charges both from overseas countries like the former Soviet Union and from groups in Cyprus on the existence of these kind of weapons in Cyprus,” he said.
“But I spoke today both with President of the House (Spyros Kyprianou), who for a long period of time was President of the Republic, and with others. None of them ever had any information that would confirm these charges.”
