On Friday evening, the Presidency issued a statement on bi-communal cooperation to jointly deal with the major fire in the occupied territories.
"When it became clear that the fire in the Kantara area was flaring up under the influence of the wind and that the existing ground and air firefighting resources sent by Turkey would not be sufficient to extinguish a fire of this scale due to the large forest fire in Marmaris, the Foreign Office initially requested assistance from the British Sovereign Base Area Command."
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"Responding to this request, two helicopters from the area of the British Sovereignty participated in the firefighting efforts," the T/C "presidency" statement said.
It is added "it was understood that support from the bases would not be enough to extinguish this large fire" the T/C side requested assistance from the Republic of Cyprus through the UN. "As part of this initiative, the president's special representative discussed the issue with the UN Chief of Mission in Cyprus, Colin Stewart, and the Greek Cypriot side and requested the support of firefighting aircraft and helicopters to fight the fire," it said.
"The Greek Cypriot side responded to our request and provided support (initially) with two firefighting aircraft and then a firefighting helicopter," the statement continued.
The T/C side conveyed to British High Commissioner Stephen Lilly and Greek Cypriot Negotiator Menelaus Menelaus its thanks for this support, and "President" Tatar, the T/C leader was quoted as saying, "called to personally thank the Greek Cypriot leader Anastasiades. However, he was unable to contact him because he was abroad."
The "presidency" then refers to the request for assistance to Israel, which it claims was mediated by Mr. Stewart and Mr. Lilly.
[BR][/P][BR]It expresses thanks to Israel while also stating that "it is our wish that cooperation with this urgent need for support provided by the Greek Cypriot side regarding the protection of our natural heritage be mutual and not exploited for political purposes."
Source: KYPE
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