By Yiannos Charalambides

Inside the cyclone of a possible political scandal of global extend, similar to that of Watergate, lies Cyprus. An investigation which was posed before the European Parliament wants, amidst others, the British and American secret services using the British military installations in Cyprus to plagiarise every kind of telecommunication messages of the entire Europe, using the spy satellite network "Echelon". This news brought turmoil to Cyprus, because, as the exerts claim, with the help of the Echelon satellite network, the British and the Americans have the possibility of infiltrating Cyprus' and Europe's government services and major corporations, plagiarise information for the benefit of multinational corporations of England and the US, and listen to our telephone conversations, thus violating any kind of individual right!

The Cyprus Government, through its spokesman, M. Papapetrou, states that before they can proceed to any actions ithey will investigate the current subject in depth. From their side, and under the threat of the European and international outcry, London and Washington hurried to belie everything that the reporter, investigator and physicist Duncan Campbell charged them before the European Parliament. In an attempt of his to avoid the fames surrounding a new scandal of economical nature, that could take greater extend than that of Watergate, the spokesman of the American Foreign Office, James Rubin, hurried to shield the activities of his country's secret services behind the laws of the United States, characteristically pointing out that: "Our secret services act inside the limit of the local legislation".

According to the information laid down to the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee by Dr. Duncan Campbell, the stations of the British bases in Cyprus (located in Ayios Nikolaos and Episkopi), in combination with that of Corneal, in Britain, are linked to 120 satellites and are carrying out plagiarisms. Behind this process, interests of millions of dollars are being hidden, since there are claims that the information, stolen through Echelon, are used to the interests of American, British and Canadian multinational (and not only) corporations, for the mere purpose of winning great "contests" {{I believe this refers to the "battles" of major corporations}} with astronomical profits.

As the Greek European MP Alekos Alabanos stated to our newspaper, the French Minister of Justice, Elisabeth Kikou, denounced that there are evidence suggesting that one of the reasons the French corporation "Airbus" lost the deal of selling aircrafts to Saudi Arabia, was due to the plagiarism of information through the Echelon network. These evidence were used, according to Mrs Kikou, by the companies "McDonnell Douglas" and "Boeing" which finally won the "contest". According to Mr. Alabanos, the network Echelon is built to plagiarise information of economical importance. For the plagiarism of military information, things are more difficult and other networks and systems are used. The goal of the European Parliament, he said, is to appoint an Interrogational Commission, because, as he clarified, from the evidence at hand, it can be concluded that there are high possibilities of violation of individual rights. Echelon, he claimed, looks like a continuous Watergate scandal.

*The legend under a photograph of the military installation in North Yorkshire read: "The above radar and station, could be one of a total of 12 terrestrial satellite telecommunication stations connected to the Echelon network. The European and international public opinion watches this subject closely, because, amidst others, the British and the Americans have also the possibility to violate our own privacy.

Source:
Cypriot Newspaper "I Simerini", Friday, February 25th, 2000