On Friday night, the “presidency” issued a statement on bi-communal cooperation to jointly deal with the large fire in the occupied territories.
The existing ground and air firefighting sent from Turkey would not be enough to put out a fire of this magnitude, due to the large forest fire in Marmaris, the Foreign Office initially asked for help from the British Command of the Sovereign Bases Area. p>
“Responding to this request, two helicopters from the area of the British Sovereign participated in the firefighting efforts”, states the announcement of the T/C “presidency”.
It added “it was understood that the support from the bases would not be enough to put out this great fire” the Turkish side asked for help from the Republic of Cyprus through the UN. “As part of this initiative, the President's Special Representative discussed the issue with the Head of the UN Mission in Cyprus, Colin Stewart, and the Greek Cypriot side, and requested the support of firefighting aircraft and helicopters to combat the fire.”/p>
“The Greek Cypriot side responded to our request and provided support (initially) with two firefighting aircraft and then with a firefighting helicopter”, the announcement continues.
The Turkish side conveyed its thanks to British High Commissioner Steven Lilly and Greek negotiator Menelaos Menelaus for this support, and the “president” Tatar, as reported to the Turkish leader, “called to personally thank him. Greek Cypriot leader Anastasiadis. However, he was unable to contact him because he was abroad. ”
Thanks are expressed to Israel and it is also stated that “our desire is to cooperate with this urgent need for support provided by the Greek Cypriot side regarding the protection of our natural heritage to be reciprocal and not exploited for political purposes “.
However, KYPE yesterday referred to information, claiming that the Republic of Cyprus contacted Israel on Wednesday and requested the assistance of aircraft if necessary to extinguish the fire in the occupied territories. The same source told KYPE that “the Republic acted as it would for a fire in the free areas”.
Source: KYPE
