CYPRIOT President Nikos Christodoulides said on Sunday he would expand “defence” co-operation with the United States, following last week’s meeting with US President Joe Biden.

The eastern Mediterranean island is key to Nato operations facilitating Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, with RAF bases on Cyprus used both for surveillance flights over Gaza whose findings are shared with Israel, and for US flights supplying the Israeli military.

The bases’ role has prompted protests organised by the Cyprus Peace Council, with a rally of hundreds outside RAF Akrotiri in September under the slogan Out With the Bases of Death. 

They also threaten to drag Cyprus into Israel’s ever-expanding war, with the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah having threatened to retaliate on Cyprus.

President Christodoulides boasted that his reception at the White House last week was “proof and recognition of the geostrategic role of Cyprus and the country’s potential and capabilities.”

Cyprus’s communist party Akel warned the government “not to tie the country to anyone’s chariot or turn our island into a war base.”