British bases on Cyprus targeted at EU Parliament

BY

WOLFGANG RAINER RUPP

Britain is continuously violating the so-called Zurich-London agreements which gave Cyprus its independence and Britain the right to establish its bases on the island. This was the gist of a forceful presentation Stefanos Stefanou, Secretary of the Cyprus Peace Council, delivered at a meeting of the European Parliament's "Intergroup For Peace Initiatives" in Brussels on Tuesday 14 June.

In his speech, titled, British Military Bases in Cyprus - An obstacle for peace in Cyprus and in the Middle East, he also revealed some little known features about the two large British military bases near Limassol and Larnaca. According to the Zurich-London agreements, the British not only have reserved the right to use the roads, the ports, the airports and the airspace of the sovereign Republic of Cyprus, but London also claims full sovereignty for its bases as it refuses to pay rent to the "host" country. Moreover, there is no time limit for the abolition of these bases.

According to Stefanos Stefanou, the real problem arises, however, from the fact that Britain keeps violating the terms of the Zurich-London agreements as regards the mission of the bases. The Agreements stipulate that the bases can be used only by Britain or any countries which belong to the Commonwealth in order to promote peace and co-operation, life-saving mission, etc. But due to the fact that the US military has taken up a permanent presence on the bases, Stefanou wondered aloud, since when the United States had became a member of the Commonwealth. He also failed "to find any justification" to call the war of aggression by the US and their British ally against Iraq "a peace operation".

The EP-Conference, Military Bases in Europe: What are the Issues, was organised by Tobias Pflueger, a well known German peace activist, who had been elected to the European Parliament on the ticket of the "Party of Democratic Socialism" (PDS).

Pflueger considered the meeting "as the first step of a number of resolutions against military bases in Europe". Simultaneously, he wants to draw attention to what he calls "the increasingly dangerous and globally orientated military activities of the European Union". British bases on Cyprus and US-bases in Europe, according to Pflüger, "provide the infrastructure for future wars of aggression". Therefore, he works with the EP´s Intergroup For Peace Initiatives for the creation of a European-wide grassroot movement against military bases aimed at the denial of the infrastructure for future wars.

With reference to a quote by the US-military expert Chalmers Johnson that the 703 officially recognised US-military bases abroad "are like micro-colonies", as they are completely off limits for the jurisdiction of the so called "host country", Stefanou pointed out that in Cyprus, Europe ends at the fence of the two British bases. When Britain joined the European Common Market, London succeeded in introducing a clause which kept its bases on Cyprus outside the EU.

Just like on the US-Base Guantanamo on Cuba, the British bases on Cyprus are exclusively governed by military law. Furthermore, a clause in the just failed EU Constitution would have provided Britain with the basis for keeping the status quo on Cyprus, even in a United Europe.