Christodoulides offers praise for Trump: ‘You know where you stand’

President Nikos Christodoulides offered high praise for United States President Donald Trump, saying that the US’ 47th president has a “unique advantage”. “Either you like it or not, but you know where you stand. When you know where you stand, you can sit together, discuss, and even in the most challenging and difficult issues, find a solution. He proves that we may disagree, but if we sit together, we can find the solution,” he told American news website Breitbart. He added that Europe “does not have the luxury” not to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Trump, before later pointing out that he had met Trump in Sharm el-Sheikh last year. “I hope I will visit him in the White House soon … I really believe the sky is the limit when it comes to our cooperation with the United States. For us, the United States is the most important partner,” he said. Christodoulides has visited the White House once during his term in office so far, meeting president of the day Joe Biden in 2024. Following that meeting, Cyprus was incorporated into three programmes run by the country’s department of defence, allowing the government to buy military hardware directly from its US counterpart. Of this, Christodoulides said that in next year’s state budget, “we have a huge decrease [for] the defence ministry because we spend a lot in defence and security and we want to buy stuff, but if you want to buy stuff, you have to have a strategy”. On this front, he stressed his desire for the annual waiver of the US’ arms embargo on Cyprus to be altered and for the waiver to either be elongated or abolished in its entirety. “In order to have a strategy, you cannot implement a strategy having this one-year limit, so every year it has to go for renewal,” he said, before adding that the hope of altering the one-year waiver is “very important for our strategy”. Cyprus and the US are ‘natural allies’ He also said that Cyprus and the United States are “natural allies”, and that Cyprus is a “reliable, predictable partner of the United States in the region”. “We have common interests. We have common approaches. We need to work together, and we’re working together. The countries of the region, if I can talk on behalf of the countries of the region, … are very glad that we have the United States back in the region,” he said. He said that Cyprus “fully supports” Trump’s plan for Gaza, and that “we even put forward some ideas in order on how to implement this plan”. “Imagine if we didn’t have a US interest in our neighbours. Who and which actors would be going to fill in the vacuum that will be created without the US’ participation in the region? Malign actors. So, it is very important that we have such an administration that fully understands the geopolitical importance of the region,” he said. On the matter of Trump’s involvement in the region, he pointed out that he had appointed Thessalia Salina Shambos as his envoy for religious minorities in the region, and that he had written to Trump “informing him about this appointment and the need to work together with the United States and other countries to protect Christian minorities in these countries”. “Look, all the countries of the region, the Christian minorities in those countries are the pillar of stability. Actually, the Christian minority is one of the main reasons that we have stability in the countries of the region,” he said. He added that nonetheless, “we are facing a lot of challenges in Syria”, and that “that’s why, through the European Union but also at a bilateral level, when we talk with the Syrians, we raise all the time that they need to protect and respect the Christian minority in the country and to be inclusive”.