“Starting a discussion to re-evaluate the issue of Syria is crucial for us,” Minister Constantinos Ioannou told Reuters in an interview.

The foreign ministry was preparing to raise the matter formally with Brussels, he added.

Amid growing conflict in the Middle East, the Mediterranean island is bracing for a further influx of refugees and asylum-seekers, further straining resources, he said.

“We have five times more migrants than any other frontline member state,” Ioannou said. Data shows most are from Syria.

Cyprus has said it is expanding its capacity to host refugees but it wants its EU partners to revaluate its policies.

Ioannou said this included starting a discussion on the status of Syria and whether it is safe for refugees to return there, as well as better support for Lebanon, which hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees.

He cited a report by the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) in February this year which said two Syrian governates – Damascus and Tartous – were assessed to have “no real risk for a civilian to be personally affected by indiscriminate violence”.

More than 5 million people are estimated to have fled Syria during more than a decade of civil war, with most going to Lebanon and Turkey. Although the conflict has now settled into a stalemate, with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in control of most of the country, refugees keep leaving.

Cyprus became a migrant hotspot after the Turkish springboard to the Greek islands closed in a 2016 EU deal with Ankara.

Asylum applications in Cyprus peaked at around 21,565 in 2022, the highest since records began in 2002. Cyprus saw 1,043 Syrians arrive by boat in October, a three-fold increase on last year. In November, it recorded 795 arrivals, almost triple that of Nov. 2022.

Part of the surge is down to the anomaly on Cyprus itself. From 2019 to 2022, the island became the frontline of a new migrant route from Africa, when thousands entered the unrecognised Turkish Cypriot north on student visas, and were then smuggled through a ceasefire line to the internationally-recognised Greek Cypriot south.

That backdoor has been virtually sealed by tightened security along a 180-km “green line”, bringing overall arrivals down by two-thirds this year. But authorities worry that with one door shut, another might open.

Authorities say arrivals of Syrian refugees is gathering pace. In calm seas, it can take a small fishing boat 18-20 hours to get from Lebanon to Cyprus.

“In the last two years there has been a dramatic increase, with its peak since August this year,” said Superintendent B’ Ioannis Artemiou, head of the port and marine police unit of Famagusta.

Migrants frequently come ashore at the jutting outcrop of Cape Greco in the east of Cyprus, traversing the 100 mile (185 km) distance from Syria or Lebanon.

Ioannou said Cyprus was in close contact with Lebanon, which had intercepted “a lot” of vessels. Cyprus has offered Lebanon technical assistance and joint patrols and believes the EU should offer its neighbour more direct assistance, he said.

He also floated the idea of “safe zones” outside the EU where asylum requests could be examined. Italy, he said, has already announced a plan to build centres in Albania.

The European Commission did not reply to a request for comment.

In Geneva on Wednesday, the United Nations refugee chief told an international forum on refugees that the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza could spur more displacement in the wider region.

Police said a metal object containing “a small amount of pyrotechnic material” exploded about 30 metres away from a perimeter compound of the embassy, which lies in a heavily populated area of Nicosia.

Four youths aged between 17 and 21 found in the area were being questioned by police, a security source said. In the car of one of the detainees police found 2 knives and a hammer.

Cyprus state radio reported the detainees were Syrians.

Cyprus, on the edge of the volatile Middle East, has tightened security at locations across the island. In the wake of fresh violence authorities widened a security cordon around the embassy, shutting off civilian roads.

The embassy was the target of a botched bombing attempt in 1988 when a car packed with explosives went off on a nearby bridge, killing three people.

Police arrested the five Israeli youths, aged 19 and 20, after a British woman reported they allegedly raped her after forcing her into a hotel room at the resort of Ayia Napa on Aug. 3. They have been in custody since.

All five face six counts each of abduction, assault and rape. The trial, scheduled to start on Thursday, was adjourned because key evidence was not presented to lawyers of the accused.

Because that information was lacking, the five did not enter a plea.

That included a DNA report, photographic material, fingerprint reports and a statement from a sixth individual, one of the lawyers for the accused said.

“Before we have the whole picture of what my clients are facing they haven’t answered, they haven’t pleaded,” said lawyer Maria Neophytou, who represents three of the defendants. The lawyer for the other two men said his clients were not in the room when the alleged assault took place.

Relatives of the defendants crowded into the small courtroom in the town of Paralimni on Thursday, where the Criminal Court was in session.

Women’s advocacy groups are closely following the case due to the treatment of a British rape victim three years ago.

Last year, Cyprus’s Supreme Court acquitted a British woman who had been wrongfully convicted by a lower court of lying about being gang raped by 12 Israeli men in July, 2019.

European Union foreign ministers said on July 20 they were ready to re-engage with Turkey, but stopped short of offering Ankara a clear resumption of membership talks.

Turkey has been a candidate for EU membership for more than two decades, but talks stalled in 2016 over the bloc’s concerns over the rule of law and human rights in the country.

The division of Cyprus between its Greek and Turkish Cypriot populations, a source of friction between Greece and Turkey, has also been an impediment.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, whose countries are both EU members, said they welcomed a Turkey-EU re-engagement but that it had to be “gradual”, and, if necessary, “reversible”.

“Those two words should guide us. We can be optimistic, but we are not naive,” Mitsotakis told reporters after meeting Christodoulides in Nicosia, Cyprus’s ethnically-split capital.

The two terms have been built into European terminology over Turkey for some years, reflecting in part the long and convulsed journey of the country in attempting to join the bloc.

Christodoulides said launching a positive agenda with Turkey also implied “positive moves” on Ankara’s part over Cyprus.

“It’s important that our EU partners are also taking the same view,” Christodoulides said.

Cyprus was divided after a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a Greek Cypriot coup engineered by the military junta then ruling Greece. It is represented in the EU by an internationally-recognised Greek Cypriot government.

On-off peace negotiations in the past focussed on uniting the island under a two-zone federal umbrella endorsed by the United Nations. In recent years the Turkish Cypriot side has advocated a two-state settlement, rejected by Greek Cypriots.

“Any partitionist thoughts of two states is completely off any agenda of discussion, and I want to be very clear on that,” Mitsotakis said.

As recently as last Friday, Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar said a resumption of peace talks on Cyprus would be possible only if the Greek Cypriots accepted sovereign equality.

Nicosia (Reuters) – Cyprus hopes to develop plans for a pipeline linking it to Israel’s east Mediterranean gas fields during talks which start next month, the island’s top energy official told Reuters.

Proposals by the new centrist Cypriot government, which came to power in March, represent a markedly different approach to its predecessors in getting gas to Europe and other markets.

Rather than the 2,000 km (1,243 mile) EastMed pipeline to continental Europe, the new government is proposing a much shorter one linking Cyprus to fields off Israel. Once in Cyprus, the gas could be converted to LNG and shipped to Europe.

The eastern Mediterranean has yielded major gas discoveries in the past decade, mostly off Israel and Egypt, with interest rising since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit flows to Europe.

Lesser Cypriot discoveries are yet to enter into production and for Energy Minister George Papanastasiou, a nearly four-decade energy industry veteran, his new plan provides answers.

“It’s a win-win,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

Papanastasiou said the EastMed pipeline, which has been under discussion between Israel, Cyprus and Greece for about a decade, had not been dropped but it faced challenges.

“It’s a very high, cost intensive project, but there are technical issues such as the depth of sea where the pipeline needs to be laid,” the minister said.

Other than being shorter and faster to build, a 300 km link to fields off Israel will provide Cyprus with access to cheap gas, and give Israel another export outlet in addition to Egypt.

The projects had the backing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides, Papanastasiou said.

“There will be two technical committees with experts from both sides, starting the conversation in July. The first committee will be gas and hydrogen, and the second committee electricity,” Papanastasiou said.

Being able to potentially carry hydrogen, considered a clean fuel, made the pipeline a project which would be eligible for future financial support from institutions such as the EIB or EBRD. Both have stopped financing fossil fuel projects.

“As soon as we develop the technologies and we have enough green power generation then the pipelines can be used for hydrogen transportation,” Papanastasiou said.

With estimated gas needs in Cyprus of only 0.7 billion cubic metres, the government also wants liquefaction facilities which Papanastasiou said would encourage investors and enable the gas to get to the “most thirsty market” right now of Europe.

Cyprus and Israel are also looking at expediting a link of their electricity grids via a subsea cable, he added.

Minister Giorgos Papanastasiou said Monday he would soon visit Israel to hammer out a formal agreement. Once the deal is signed, the pipeline could be completed in 18 months.

It will take 2 ½ years to build a liquefaction plant on Cyprus once investors are secured.

So far, five sizeable gas deposits have been discovered off Cyprus’ southern coastline. Israel has 11 such fields: the biggest, named Leviathan, contains an estimated 22 trillion cubic feet (623 billion cubic meters) of gas.

Papanastasiou said he would meet later this month with energy companies licensed to explore for oil and gas inside Cyprus’ exclusive economic zone – include French Total, Italy’s Eni, ExxonMobil and Chevron – to scope out ways of collaborating on projects that would expedite getting their gas discoveries to market.

The minister said Israel agreed to the proposal pitched by the Cypriot government for the pipeline and liquefaction plant, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed on Sunday.

“The eastern Mediterranean has enough (gas) deposits. Most are inside Israel’s exclusive economic zone, but Cyprus has sufficient quantities as well for this project to materialize,” Papanastasiou told reporters.

The minister explained that this project was a truncated version of the EastMed pipeline idea. That proposal – for a 1,900-kilometer (1,300-mile), $6 billion pipeline designed to convey regional gas directly to Europe – has in recent years fallen out of favor.

Instead of a direct pipeline connection to Europe, processed gas from Cyprus could reach international markets by ship.

“When you have liquefied natural gas, it can go in any direction … Europe now needs it more, but markets can also be found in Asia,” said Papanastasiou.

In December, the previous Cypriot government said it was weighing a proposal for a similar plan as Russia’s war in Ukraine compounded an energy crisis, the AP reported.

Papanastasiou said Cypriot and Israeli authorities would need a few more months to negotiate a separate agreement on how much gas from the Cypriot Aphrodite gas field fell within neighboring Israeli waters.

A proposal for a pipeline to convey Cypriot and Egyptian gas to liquefaction plans in Egypt for export remains separate from the Israeli-Cypriot plan, the minister said.

India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, on his first official visit to Cyprus, as the two nations mark 60 years of diplomatic ties, met his Cypriot counterpart Ioannis Kasoulides and signed a letter of intent on immigration and mobility, a defense and military cooperation pact, and a deal on Cyprus joining the International Solar Alliance (ISA).

The two leaders also discussed their goals for promoting freedom, democracy, and the rule of law around the world.

According to Kasoulides, India and Cyprus were motivated by their partnership to diversify and intensify people-to-people contact in order to forge a genuinely solid and enduring friendship.

Jaishankar and Kasoulides also used the occasion to discuss the whole range of bilateral relations as well as a number of international concerns, including the war in Ukraine and the situation in Afghanistan.

Jaishankar said, “it was a matter of pleasure to be here on my first official visit as the Minister of External Affairs and this takes place as we mark 60 years of our diplomatic relations. It is a matter of particular pride and pleasure that I could be here for the occasion”.

The minister said his meeting with the Cypriot counterpart shows India’s commitment towards deepening its bilateral cooperation. “India-Cyprus partnership is one of immense importance”, he said.

“It is rooted in our shared values of democracy, diversity, pluralism and respect for law. The strategic aspects of the relationship have gained a new meaning in recent years, reflected in our bilateral engagements”, he said.

Particularly helpful was the discussion of the myriad pressing issues the world community is currently experiencing. We are both guided by similar ideals and guiding principles as we strengthen our own relationships and collaborate with other partners, he continued.

“We have had today very productive discussions on our bilateral relations, on our multilateral cooperation, on geopolitical and regional challenges. So we exchanged views on our respective neighbourhoods, on the Indo-Pacific, on the Middle East or West Asia as we call it, on Europe, on India-EU relations,” Jaishankar told the media.

The second was the Letter of Intent on Migration and Mobility Partnership, which, according to him, will offer a standard framework for agreements and collaboration to promote the mobility of students, academics, businesspeople, and professionals as well as aid in the fight against irregular migration.

Jaishankar expressed his belief that the signature of the Framework Agreement on International Solar Alliance by Cyprus will improve bilateral cooperation in the area of renewable energy.

The Cypriot minister stated that although India and Cyprus were pleased with the strong momentum in their bilateral cooperation, they aimed to further fortify the connections in areas like trade, business, investment, maritime affairs, tourism, and education.

Jaishankar added that commemorative stamps were distributed on Thursday by the two nations to mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations and the 75th anniversary of India’s independence.