Britain is making contingency plans to build a port in Cyprus to service its sovereign military bases on the island to safeguard against a disorderly Brexit next year.
According to a report in The Times on Thursday, Britain would have to spend tens of millions of pounds building a port to service its military bases in Cyprus after a no-deal Brexit.
It said, plans for the facility at RAF Akrotiri, outside Limassol, are already being drawn up as part of preparations to limit the impact of Britain leaving the EU without a trade agreement.
Equipment and other goods headed for the base travel through Cypriot commercial ports. Officials said that customs and other inspections imposed by the EU after a no-deal Brexit would seriously threaten operations.
A British Forces Cyprus spokesman Sean Tully told the Financial Mirror: “It’s absolutely right that we make sensible precautions for a no-deal Brexit to avoid any potential disruption to the SBAs.”
But he added: “We don’t have any further information about specifics for a port, its make-up or how it may be used.”
The airbase, which has the status of sovereign British territory, has a small port already but this would need to be significantly expanded. The UK Ministry of Defence is thought to have put a provisional claim on the £1.5 billion contingency funds set aside for no-deal preparations for the project.
A Whitehall source told the London daily that the proposals being looked at were “essentially to extend the RAF port in Akrotiri because it’s too small to be used properly”. They said that the plan was to “basically build a new one”.
“If we had a no deal the port — a Cypriot one — would become extremely problematic whereas the RAF port is considered British territory,” the source said.
It is thought that the MoD would be able to fund the new port from the remaining part of the unallocated 2019-20 Brexit preparedness money that was set aside in the chancellor’s last budget. The projected cost would be less than £100 million.
Another source told The Times that vulnerabilities around the base at Gibraltar had also been a source of anxiety for the government, having “been seen as an issue as far back as 2016, from the moment the [Leave] vote came through”.
Gibraltar’s naval base, which is critical for Britain’s submarine fleet, employs large numbers of civilian workers who are living in Spain. The consequences of increased friction at the border are among the key Brexit challenges that are occupying MoD planners.
Saving Brexit
A military source said that while Brexit talks continued in the political arena, work was continuing at army-to-army level to maintain relations with European allies, particularly Germany and France.
A government spokesman told The Times: “We remain absolutely confident that we are going to secure a good deal as that is in the interests of both the UK and the EU and we are working with the government of Gibraltar and our European partners to ensure this.”
Britain has retained two Sovereign Base Areas covering 99-sq-mile area at Akrotiri and Dhekelia as part of the deal that granted Cyprus independence on 1960.
These areas serve an important role as a station for signals intelligence and provide a vital strategic part of UK communications gathering and monitoring network in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Akrotiri was used as a launch pad for strikes against Syrian government targets in April when Four Tornadoes took off with eight Storm Shadow missiles for a hit against a chemical weapons factory west of Homs.
RAF Akrotiri is Britain’s main forward mounting base for overseas operations in the Middle East and has been used frequently to carry out airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq.
