President Nikos Christodoulides on Thursday promised that “we are going to have an open and frank discussion with the British government” over the future of the United Kingdom’s bases in Cyprus.

“The British bases in Cyprus are something that is a colonial consequence … We have more than 10,000 Cypriot citizens within the British bases. We have a responsibility to those people, and when the situation in the Middle East, we are going to have an open and frank discussion with the British government,” he said upon his arrival at the day’s European Council summit in Brussels.

Asked whether he wishes for the bases to be “gone”, he said that “we have a clear approach with regard to the future of the British bases”, before adding, “I am sure that you understand that I am not going to negotiate in public”.

Those comments come a day after he had described the bases as a “colonial remnant”, though he did say on Wednesday that the “level of cooperation” between the British and Cypriot governments is “extremely positive”.

While Christodoulides’ rhetoric regarding the bases’ future has been emboldened in recent weeks, the British government has thus far appeared to be in no mood to discuss any change to their future, with the UK’s parliamentary undersecretary of state for the armed forces Al Carns said on Tuesday that the bases’ future is “not in question”.

Carns had also said that when the country’s Defence Secretary John Healey had visited the island earlier this month, “the Cypriot national guard reaffirmed that our relationship is closer now than ever before”.

During the same Commons debate, opposition MP Al Pinkerton had spoken of “growing disquiet within Cyprus” regarding the bases’ presence in the aftermath of the Akrotiri air force base being hit by an Iranian-made drone on March 2.

That disquiet had earlier seen Akel leader Stefanos Stefanou demand the bases’ abolition, saying  that his party has been “emphasising this for decades, calling for the abolition of the bases”, and that “the challenge now is to make it clear at every opportunity that Cyprus is not and does not want to become a war base”.

Opposition to the bases’ existence is bicommunal, too, with Turkish Cypriot opposition political party CTP deputy leader Asim Akansoy having said that the UK’s continued possession of two sovereign bases on the island is “a great mistake of history”.

In the UK, former prime minister Rishi Sunak had said in the aftermath of the drone strike that Cyprus “is only a target because of our sovereign bases there”, while Cypriot Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said that the government had “consistently” warned that the British bases could become a target in the event of a conflict in the region.