To the Editor:

I read with deep annoyance the disturbing caption of your January 18 issue front-page photograph, that “Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades and British Prime Minister David Cameron reaffirmed the strong bonds of friendship and partnership between Cyprus and the UK, during a meeting at 10 Downing Street in London, Wednesday, January 15.”

As a Greek-American Veteran United States Air Force Officer who served two years in Greece at the Athens Office of the Air Attache in the U.S. Embassy, I feel embarrassed and saddened that after the huge damage that the British have caused to the nation of Cyprus, the Cypriots erroneously consider their relations with the British as “strong bonds of friendship and partnership.”

Britain’s treacherous attitude and cowardly course of action against Cyprus for 39½ years, along with the criminal Kissingerian doctrine that continues to permeate the U.S. Department of State in Foggy Bottom (appropriate location) for the same number of years, are contrary to Western and American values that we so often hear British Foreign Office officers and American Secretaries of State espouse.

Both Greece and Cyprus have provided to Western best interests and even more so to America’s throughout the nearly four decades, and all we see as assistance is their expectations not only to turn the other cheek but their behinds.

I thank the Lord for making me a “native” American (Gary, IN), for if I were either a Greek or a Cypriot native I would run for office on the platform to kick out the British from the Dekhelia and Akrotiri bases on Cyprus and the Americans from Souda Bay in Greece and lease them to the Russians – an anathema to both British and American foreign-policy planners – who would love to have warm-water access after centuries of dreams.

If the Turks know how to play hardball as unjustified as they are of their internationally-illegal occupation of one third of Cyprus, why should not the Cypriots and the Greeks play the same game with justice on their side?

Dr. Dean C. Lomis
Newark, DE