President Nikos Christodoulides said “the sky is the limit when it comes to our bilateral relations” with the United States, in an interview with Breitbart News published on Sunday and reposted by US President Donald Trump on Truth Social.
Christodoulides, who gave the interview on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, said Trump had a unique advantage in world affairs because, although he is bold, everyone knows where they stand with him, which helps him negotiate better than anyone else. He said he had met Trump in person in Egypt at the Gaza peace summit Trump organised last year, and hoped to visit the White House soon.
Energy
Major energy announcements are expected in Cyprus in early October and will deepen ties between the two countries further, Christodoulides said. With events in the Middle East upending global energy supplies, he said, developments in the Eastern Mediterranean as an alternative mattered even more for Europe and the world.
He described Cyprus and the United States, especially under Trump, as natural allies because of deep common interests, including energy. Chevron and ExxonMobil, two of the largest US energy companies, are active in Cyprus’s exclusive economic zone, seeking to help produce natural gas.
Cyprus’s ability to contribute to Europe’s energy supply and its efforts to create more Western energy sources were extremely important, he said, pointing to the consequences Europe had faced from depending on Russia for energy.
Turkey
Christodoulides said the intransigence of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the great obstacle to a solution of the Cyprus problem. Every other country in the region, including Greece, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and India, as well as the United States and others, was cooperating except Turkey.
Defence and investment
The United States is Cyprus’s most important partner in trade, defence and security, Christodoulides said, speaking about the appointment of John Breslow as the new US ambassador to Cyprus. He said Cyprus was working very closely with Washington to upgrade its military infrastructure, and that the United States was now its closest ally in defence, security and intelligence.
In the decades he had spent working to build closer ties, he said, he had never seen the two countries as close as they were now. He was very glad the United States was back in the region, particularly under an administration that fully understood the importance of the wider Middle East.
Following the recent lifting of the arms embargo, the United States can now sell weapons to Cyprus. Christodoulides said he hoped the lifting would not need approval every year but could instead be renewed every five years.
He said US businesses were investing in Cyprus beyond defence, probably for the first time to such an extent. Companies investing in Cyprus were not only investing in a country of almost 1 million people but in a European market of 450 million, with Cyprus as their gateway to the wider Middle East.
Christian minorities and IMEC
He said Cyprus was working with the United States and Trump to protect Christian minorities in the Middle East, which were vital to stability in many Arab countries in the region. The convergences between the two countries on cultural issues such as protecting Christians, on trade, energy and other economic matters, and above all on defence and security, were endless.
He also spoke of hopes for progress on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).
EU presidency
Christodoulides said the main achievement of Cyprus’s rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, which ended earlier this year, was bringing the region closer to the EU. It had taken a lot of time and effort to make his European Council colleagues understand the importance of the wider Middle East, and Cyprus had hosted an informal meeting of the leaders of the 27 member states and the presidents of the EU institutions with leaders from the region.
He also pointed to the EU’s focus on defence, with 150 billion euros available through the SAFE instrument to strengthen the capabilities of the bloc and its member states. The EU and the United States may take different approaches on some issues, he said, but there was no way the EU could afford a transatlantic rift.
(Information from Cyprus News Agency)
