British planned to close Bases in 1978

As a result of revising the defence budget, the British government in 1974 had decided in principle to abandon the bases in Cyprus but stalled because of American objections, according to declassified 1978 Foreign Office documents this week.

The documents, kept secret up to now, show that both governments agreed on the information gathering importance of the bases in the region.

In June 1977 the issue was discussed in Washington between Whitehall and the new US government of Jimmy Carter, when a proposal for the American side to meet 50% of the expenses was put on the table.

It is not clear from the documents which side made the proposal, but it appears that it was later rejected, although Carter had accepted it.

The outcome of the discussions was that the decision to abandon the bases was suspended.

Another related document states that the issue of abandoning the bases was never discussed with the Cyprus Government, and adds: “Whenever the matter was brought up, the position was that the British Government does not intend to abandon any part of the bases.” Nevertheless, the possibility that it might do so had been mentioned by prime minister Harold Wilson to the Greek Government.

At the end of the document there is a handwritten note, dated 27 March 2008, that a next paragraph was being left out, to be released 10 years later.

The documents also show that the British government was prepared since then to offer part of the SBA area to facilitate a solution to the Cyprus problem, a thing which it finally did during the Annan Plan in 2004.

According to the same batch of declassified papers, Archbishop Makarios just four days before he died on 3 August 1977 had told his future successor Spyros Kyprianou that he had regretted signing the high-level agreement with the Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash with which he accepted a federal solution. Kyprianou mentioned this to the British Prime Minister James Callahan during talks in London on 23 June 1978.