16
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE EXPENDITURE COMMITTEE
9 December 1975] Mr C A WHITMORE, Air Vice Marshal
J GINGELL and Rear Admiral F W HEARN
with a distance of 75 miles between them. These are problems of interference and SO on. Whether we could surmount those technical problems by palliatives of one kind or another I would have to look into.
Chairman.
73. Surely the problem is this: if you decide to evacuate one Sovereign Base Area you evacuate the eastern one, and there you have the Turks on the border, and if we went they would go in, and this would increase the tension in the island. If the Turks got into our eastern Sovereign Base Area this would cause problems?- That certainly is our view at the moment. This is the overriding consideration, but the pre- mise of Mr. Conlan's question was that we had solved the political difficulties, or we were ignoring them for the pur- pose of the point he was making. Cer- tainly at the moment the political considerations are paramount.
Mr. Sandelson.] Is not one of the problems this: that we have an agree- ment in regard to two Sovereign Bases and that agreement would seriously be threatened if we attempted to evacuate one part of the contractual arrange- ment? Either we have to occupy both, or the whole arrangement is disturbed. Is that not right?
Chairman.
Chairman.] Our treaty was made with the Republic of Cyprus.
Mr. Sandelson.] Is that not the reason why we have to continue to occupy? I do not disagree with Mr. Conlan's view that if there is some price we can save on the assumption that we can surmount technical difficulties then it should be worth doing.
Chairman.] I think time is short and we must move on.
Mr Finsberg
74. Can I follow up Mr. Conlan's point? The appearance of Akrotiri to all of us was like a ghost town. We are now evacuating one part of one SBA and concentrating many facilities in the other. What sort of certainty is there
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going to be that the existing manpower will be capable of policing the remaining areas, of preventing pilfering and of maintaining what equipment is left ready for it to be used in an emergency in which the enemy is going give us sufficient notice to get our defences? The question providing adequate safeguards the property and equipment which we shall continue to have in both the SBAS after the run down is some- thing which we plainly take into account when we are deciding what levels of police we need in the two areas. I am aware of the point which arose when you were in the island, and I under- stand in our plans for running down the numbers of both the SBA police and Army depot and RAF police, we are making full allowance for the need to prevent pilfering and damage to our equipment so far as we can.
Mr Sandelson.] Could we have a paper, Mr Chairman, covering Mr Finsberg's important question?
Chairman
in
It
75. I think that is best. We cannot go on with these long answers. Could you send us a paper on that. I would like to ask this: I understand that there was talk of a medal for servicemen who undertook tasks of considerable danger and risk during the manoeuvres Cyprus. Has this been abandoned alto- gether?(Rear Admiral Hearn.) This was looked at in considerable detail in 1974 on the application of the Com- mander of the British Forces there. was not thought that the standards of danger and hardship required in the evacuation of Cyprus were sufficient to justify a Peace-Keeping Medal which was the proposal that was put forward, and this was a view that was endorsed within the Ministry of Defence. The Com- mander subsequently suggested a dif- ferent form of medal, called an Armed Forces Medal, which had rather more restricted standards, but that also has been turned down, so it would be true to say that at the present moment there is no movement on the medal for Cyprus.
Chairman.] Thank you, Mr Whitmore, and your colleagues, for coming.
No comments yet.
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