Nicosia - Cyprus yesterday denounced London Ministry of Defence "leaks" to the press of a contingency evacuation plan for the island as pressure to stop it from deploying missiles opposed by Turkey. A Cypriot government spokesman said Nicosia considers a report of the plan, published by the Sunday Times, a "pressure lever for the cancellation and non-delivery" of Russian S-300 air-defence missiles due to arrive here later this year. He added that it is "not a normal and usual phenomenon, the leaking of information by the British MoD regarding their plans."
Quoting a defense ministry official, the paper said that military planners at the Permanent Joint Force headquarter at Northwood, in west London, were developing a plan to evacuate as many as 250,000 people, many of them British tourists from the island.
