Inquiry blames Cyprus president for deadly naval base explosion

Inquiry blames Cyprus president for deadly naval base explosion

Cypriot President Demetris Christofias is to be directly blamed for a deadly explosion of decaying explosives at a navy base in July, an official inquiry said on Monday.

"The president has most serious responsibilities, not only institutional but also personal, mainly because he did not handle the issue in the right way," lawyer Polys Polyviou, who chaired the inquiry commission, told a press conference broadcast live on Cyprus television.

The explosion occurred on July 11 in a stack of 98 containers packed with Iranian explosives and munitions that had been confiscated from a Russian-owned ship bound for Syria. It resulted in the death of 13 people and destroyed the island's main power station, wiping away with it any prospect of GDP growth this year.

Giving an outline of the 600-page report, Polyviou said President Christofias "displayed inexcusable negligence and carelessness in the handling of the issue" after deciding to confiscate the cargo of explosives.

"His responsibility (for the incident) is direct, concrete and indisputable," he added.

Polyviou noted that resigned defense and foreign affairs ministers also shared a great part of the responsibility.

"It was inexcusable for the president to say that he did not ask and thus did not know," he said, referring to Christofias earlier statement that for over two years his ministers had not informed him of the dangerous state of the decaying explosives.

There has not yet been any comment by the president or his spokesperson.

A spokesman for the ruling AKEL party, which Christofias chaired before becoming president, cast doubts on the findings of the report stating its conclusions were not supported by facts.

Editor: Deng Shasha

English.news.cn   2011-10-03 21:43:49 FeedbackPrintRSS
NICOSIA, Oct. 3 (Xinhua)