BLAGAROON

FURY IN CYPRUS OVER 

de ALMEIDA SPEECH:

The Cyprus Government has reacted angrily to a speech given by EU Ambassador to Washington, Jose Marques de Almeida, at a NATO seminar in the Portuguese National Institute of Defence on October 23 2010. Cypriot leaders are incensed at de Almeida’s comments on the division of their island brought about by an invasion by NATO member Turkey, in 1974. The invasion set up a bitterly contested partition of the island, which had wrested independence from Britain in 1960, and since 1974 occupied by more than 40,000 Turkish NATO troops in the northern part of the island and half of the island’s capital, Nicosia.

De Almeida, a former adviser to President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, said in his speech that the best solution for the enhancement of EU-U.S. relations would be that the European Union (EU) joins NATO. De Almeida was one of the speakers in a seminar organized by the National Defence Institute of Portugal in Lisbon. Before being adviser to the EU commission president, he was president of the Portuguese Institution, a government think tank to elaborate on defence and strategic policies According to Marques de Almeida; “the main difficulty in the NATO- EU relation is the issue on the Cyprus unification; Turkey has the second largest army in the alliance, but the division of the island of Cyprus blocks a better relation with the EU”, he stated.

Cyprus is a member of the EU since 1 May 2004 and has a veto on any new members coming into the Union.  The Cypriot leaders were further incensed by a statement released by NATO indicating that during the upcoming NATO summit in Lisbon on November 19-20,  Secretary General of NATO, Anders Rasmussen will propose “the enhancement of the relationship with Turkey”, a move that could include the Turkish “presence in the European Defence Agency with a full membership". These provocative comments by the NATO-EU political and military elite will only add to the tensions which have already arisen in the EU over Turkey’s application for membership which is being informally opposed by Germany and France. There is also no likelihood of Cyprus or Greece agreeing to Turkish entry while its troops are still in occupation of Northern Cyprus.

“EU joining NATO” is the latest push by the elite in Brussels in accelerating the militarisation of the EU which was provided for in the Lisbon Treaty which came into force last year after a second referendum in Ireland. The supporters of the Lisbon Treaty vehemently denied that Ireland could be part of an EU military alliance by default but now we have these statements and others by Merkel and Sarkozy proposing the immediate formation of an EU Army and the rapid establishment of the European Defence Agency shortly after the Treaty was ratified. These lies are now exposed and will be further exposed at the NATO summit in Lisbon later this month. The new NATO strategy for the 21^st Century prepared by former US Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, Madeline Allbright, and a cabal of retired Generals and others, will be presented and agreed here. The strategy retains NATO’s inhuman “First Strike” Nuclear weapons strategy which would cause the death of millions and poison the Earth’s atmosphere with radiation inimical to all life on the planet.

NATO’s barbarous war mongering will be actively opposed by a people’s “Counter Summit” peace conference in the city on the same weekend and massive public demonstrations against NATO’s aggressive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on the Saturday, November 20^th. Delegates from Ireland’s anti-war and peace movements will be taking part in these events.

Further information is available on the Peace and Neutrality link on the sidebar

FearFeasaMacLéinn

Áth Cliath/Dublin

Samhain/November 2 2010.