Cooper: UK takes relationship with Cyprus “immensely seriously”

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has said that her government takes its relationship with Cyprus “immensely seriously” while facing questions from MPs regarding the decisions taken regarding its bases on the island before and after it was hit by an Iranian-made drone at the start of the month.

“Since January, we have been pre-deploying additional jets to Cyprus, to the sovereign base, exactly to provide additional protection for Cyprus, including additional air defence and radar capabilities. We took that issue very seriously and continue to do so,” she said.

She added that she has spoken to her Cypriot counterpart, Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos, “on a series of occasions” and pointed out that Defence Secretary John Healey visited the island earlier this month and “not only visited the sovereign base … but met the Cypriot government”.

“We take our partnership with the Cypriot government, and the defence of operations around Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean, immensely seriously,” she said.

During the same debate, she was asked by opposition Conservative Party MP Ben Obese-Jecty whether “Operation Olive Harvest” is being “used by the US to fly reconnaissance over the Middle East in defensive support” of the United States’ operations in and around Iran.

Operation Olive Harvest is the name given to reconnaissance missions flown over the Middle East by American Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft based out of the British Akrotiri air force base.

Obese-Jecty had made reference to that particular aircraft after it had been reported that the drone which hit Cyprus had been aimed at a hangar which houses U-2 aircraft.

In response, Cooper said that Obese-Jecty is “right about the strike around the hangar”, thus refuting her earlier claims that the drone had only hit the base’s runway, but stressed that the US is not coordinating any of its own operations out of Akrotiri.

“The request from the US to provide basing support for the operations against the ballistic missiles [in Iran] was a request for RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia. The agreement we have reached to provide that basing support is confined to RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia,” she said.

RAF Fairford is located on the UK mainland and Diego Garcia is an island in the Indian Ocean.

“We have given permission for US forces to use longstanding basing at RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia to support defensive strikes against the ballistic missiles that are targeting the Gulf, but let me confirm again the point that the prime minister made last week: our Cyprus base is not being used in those US operations,” she said.

Since the drone strike, the UK has deployed various military assets to Cyprus, including the  Type 45 destroyer warship the HMS Dragon, three AW159 Wildcat helicopters, and a Merlin Mk2 helicopter, while Healey had also said that “top experts” from the UK had arrived in Cyprus to coordinate the bases’ air defence.