US Lawmaker Offers Friendship To Cyprus To Counter Russia's 'Machinations'

ATHENS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th May, 2019) Chairman of the US House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel has suggested to Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades during a recent meeting that their two countries should strengthen their friendly ties as two democratic countries to counter Russia's alleged hostile tactics.

"With Russia's malevolent machinations I think we are looking for friends who share our core values, democracy, and that is certainly the situation here as well," Engel said after the meeting, as quoted by the Cyprus news Agency on Monday.

The US lawmaker also noted that both he and the Cypriot leader agreed that relations between the two countries were improving, and that he wanted to do his utmost as the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee to further bolster bilateral ties.

"We have an opportunity for peace and cooperation as never before. The energy rights that this country has are exciting, it is a new threshold and I think that Mr. Putin in Russia can't and shouldn't have been able to control the situation," the lawmaker said.

When asked whether an improvement in relations between Cyprus and the United States meant that the latter would lift its over 30-year-old arms ban on the island nation, Engel said that it was time to review old issues.

"There will be negotiations, there will discussions and I think there will be progress made. This is no longer the 1970s and we have to look each problem with a fresh look and I am for that," Engel added.

The Cypriot government's press service, however, did not mention the lawmaker's statements about Russia in its press release after the meeting.

A government spokesperson said that the Anastasiades and Engel had talked about improving relations between Cyprus and the United States, with Engel also expressing support for Cyprus's sovereign rights.

The island of Cyprus has been de facto divided into the Republic of Cyprus and the non-recognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since the 1970s, when Turkey sent its troops to the island in response to an attempted coup by the Greek military. As a result, Ankara occupied nearly 40 percent of the country's territory, where the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was proclaimed in 1983.

In 1987, the United States imposed a ban on arms sales to Cyprus in order to prevent the situation on the island from worsening and stirring away from a diplomatic settlement. In early April, a bipartisan bill envisioning a lifted arms embargo was introduced to Congress.

In 2011, rich gas reserves were discovered off Cyprus's coast by US company Noble Energy. Cyprus then granted oil and gas exploration licenses to French Total, Italian Eni and US ExxonMobil, causing an outcry from Ankara, which opposes the offshore drilling, saying that it violates the rights of the Turkish community living on the island.

In late February, Cypriot Finance Minister Harris Georgiades told Sputnik that Nicosia would also welcome the participation of Russian companies in the gas exploration.

At the same time, Nicosia is participating in a US-endorsed project aimed at building the EastMed pipeline to transport natural gas from Cyprus's and Greece's offshore gas reserves in the East Mediterranean to Greece.

The project is considered to be a response to the construction of the TurkStream gas pipeline, which is set to bring Russian gas across the Black Sea directly to Turkey, and southern and southeastern Europe.