DEFENCE Minister Socratis Hasikos announced yesterday that the neighbouring National Guard and British radars on Troodos no longer interfered with one another’s operation.
But the British Bases said yesterday they were still examining the situation.
The minister made the announcement after taking members of the House Defence Committee through driving snow to tour the site of the Thomson radars yesterday morning.
The National Guard’s radars were, until last October, located further down the mountain at a spot where they did not provide full coverage of the Nicosia Flight Information Region. But four months ago the radars were moved near the British radar site on Mount Olympus, giving them vastly improved performance.
British military authorities initially claimed the National Guard radars interfered with the operation of their own facility.
“Deputies saw with their own eyes that our radars cover the whole Nicosia FIR,” the minister told reporters at the National Guard’s Club on Troodos yesterday.
“And any problems we had with the British authorities have been fully resolved through co-operation. SBA radars operate without any interference from ours, the same way as our radars work without interference from theirs. And no side had to give anything up to achieve this, ” Hasikos added.
But an SBA spokesman told the Cyprus Mail yesterday: “That remains to be seen. We are conducting a technical evaluation to determinate whether there is still a problem with the two radar sites being next to each other.”
Defence Committee chairman Takis Hadjidemetriou of KISOS was impressed by the site.
“I was extremely impressed by the radars’ site, compared to the one we had before. There has been a definite improvement. High technology, information and properly trained personnel is what makes good defence and in the radars’ case I must say we have reached that stage,” Hadjidemetriou said right after touring the site.
“The aim is for all army units to reach that stage,” Hasikos noted.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
