Defence Minister Vasilis Palmas on Friday promised to “strengthen our deterrent power” while attending a ceremony to award ‘black berets’ to armed infantrymen in the Larnaca district village of Kornos.

He said the National Guard “is and will continue to be the guardian of the defence and security of the Republic of Cyprus and the most reliable deterrent against any intrusion”.

“The defence ministry will continue to strengthen our deterrent power, improve our operational capability and upgrade our defensive armour,” he said.

He said the government is doing this because “for 51 years, we have been experiencing the crime of the illegal Turkish occupation of 37 per cent of the territory of our homeland”.

That strengthening will include new military hardware, funded through the more than €1 billion which Cyprus obtained from the European Union’s Safe programme.

“Under these circumstances, the concepts of defence and deterrent take on particular importance and strengthening our capabilities in these areas is a top priority, a sacred duty and a moral promise to all those who fought to defend the peace, democracy and territorial integrity of our homeland,” he said.

That strengthening will include new military hardware which will be secured with the over €1 billion of funding which the Republic of Cyprus secured through the European Union’s Security Action for Europe (Safe) defence procurement programme.

Palmas said earlier this month that states participating in the programme have been given until November 30 to provide to the EU what he described as “the list of armament programmes which interest” them.

Meanwhile, plans to upgrade both the Evangelos Florakis naval base at Mari and the Andreas Papandreou airbase in Paphos were publicly announced by the government at the end of last year, with Palmas saying at the time that the upgrades at Mari may cost in excess of €200 million.

He said the upgrades constitute a “large project which will be subsidised” and both he and President Nikos Christodoulides said efforts would be made to secure funding for it from the European Union for this purpose.

Upgrades to the airbase, he said, would only cost between €10m and €14m, “depending on the outcome of the recommendations and proposals which will be made”.

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Christodoulides, meanwhile, has suggested that the United States may offer financial assistance to the Republic of Cyprus for the bases’ upgrades.

Military ties between Cyprus and the US have been strengthened this year, with the US having authorised Cyprus to buy military hardware directly from the government after joining three programmes run by the country’s department of defence.

The country was incorporated into the US defence security cooperation agency’s foreign military sales (FMS) programme, its excess defence articles (EDA) programme and will be allocated resources under the US’ ‘Title 10’ security assistance provisions.

It is the inclusion into the FMS programme which will allow the government to purchase military hardware directly from the US government, with the country previously having only been able to buy US military hardware from private companies.

Being able to circumvent private companies will allow the government to buy weapons and other hardware at cheaper prices than before, given that the US government typically acquires its apparatus in bulk and is thus able to sell it on for cheaper prices than what private companies would offer to a military of the National Guard’s size.