By Anthony O. Miller
CONFUSION reigned yesterday, both on the British Bases as to where troops would hold their war games next week – in the Akamas or a National Guard firing range – and among environmentalists, who did not know what, if any, protests to stage if the Akamas got the nod.
The National Guard on Monday said it would allow British forces use its Kalochorio firing range for live-fire drills, as a compromise to using the environmentally sensitive Akamas Peninsula.
SBA Spokesman Rob Need said yesterday that next week’s planned Akamas war games would not use any live ammunition. One reason, he said, was because the signs warning of its impending use were ripped down in early January by people protesting against the exercises being staged then, and the signs have not since been replaced.
Under the 1960 Treaty of Establishment, which ended Cyprus’ British colonial status, SBA troops have a right to use Cyprus Republic territory for war games for a few days each year. To environmentalists’s dismay, they exercise that right in the ecologically-sensitive Akamas, for lack of a better site.
Despite the looming February 9 date for the drills, as of yesterday neither the British High Commission nor Sovereign Base Area (SBA) authorities had received the Cyprus government OK to use the Kalochorio firing range as an Akamas substitute, British spokesmen said.
In fact, both High Commission Spokesman Piers Cazalet and SBA Spokesman Captain Jon Brown said they first learned in Tuesday’s Cyprus Mail that the Defence Ministry was even considering SBA use of the Kalochorio range.
“It’s interesting to see the material that’s appeared in the press,” Cazalet said yesterday, “but we’d be delighted to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
“We have read in the press what you have written, which was quite informative,” Brown echoed. “Basically, we have had no formal offer of the use of Kalochorio.”
“We’ve spent the last couple of years going around this course, and things have not progressed very far,” Cazalet said. “We’re having a meeting later this week with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs… Maybe our discussions with the Ministry later this week will be rapidly productive,” he added.
“As far as I am aware – and this is through the press – the government and the National Guard have been having discussions. There has been no formal offering of the Kalochorio range to the British Forces Cyprus,” Brown said.
“All we’ve said all along is: Provided we have an area where we can train, that meets the standards we require, we are happy not to carry out live- firing on the Akamas… we are happy to leave the Akamas alone,” Brown said.
Defence Minister Yiannakis Chrysostomis said on Monday the National Guard would this week hand the Foreign Ministry the proposal to let SBA troops use the Kalochorio range – a proposition, he noted, the Council of Ministers had approved.
Brown said British High Commission Defence Attaché Colonel Crichton Wakelin was discussing with his superiors the Kalochorio “offer,” and was seeking “clarification” of it.
Cazalet said he did not know what type of protests to expect from environmentalists, who seriously disrupted the last British exercises in the Akamas. “They haven’t wound things up quite as much as they did in January, so I don’t know what to expect.”
Greens Party leader George Perdikis said yesterday the island’s environmentalists were meeting last night to plan any protests they might mount against the use of the Akamas, if the Kalochorio range was not approved in time for next week’s exercises.
Protests by environmentalists in early January, contributed to an SBA decision to cut from three days to one the non-live-fire war games in the Akamas, and to cut from 300 to 100 the number of troops involved in the drills.
SBA authorities at the time used giant military troop helicopters, instead of troop trucks, to transport the British forces into the Akamas, to avoid confrontation with the massed protesters.
Protestors in early January destroyed signs, fencing and damaged portable toilet units in their campaign to stop the Akamas exercises from going ahead. The SBA threatened to seek compensation for some £50,000 in damage to the British property.
