by Nikitas » Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:43 pm
If you read the Haaretz article re the pipeline, it refers to opinions expressed by a private company, and it leaves out the strategic part, which is the supply of Israeli and Cypriot gas to the EU. And it conveniently leaves out the official visit of Israeli president Peres to Greece recently where this very topic was on the top of the agenda.
Now, re the putting of pipelines through others EEZ, the law of the sea convention provides specifically for this easement. Which makes any Turkish attempts to claim the EEZ between Cyprus and the EU a hollow pursuit. Even if it works Turkey's way, it cannot block the Cyprus EU pipeline, just like Cyprus would not be able to block any Israeli-Turkish pipeline. Look it up.
As for the water, it is not clear which is the priority. To get water to the north, or to build a pipeline? Getting water to the north would be a piece of cake with two medium sized tankers of 100 000 ton capacity. They can do a round trip each every 24 hours and provide more water, at a lower cost than any pipeline. My calculator shows the annual amount of water via tanker to be 73 million cubic meters. This is probably another one of those pharaonic schemes like the new Bosphorus isthmus Erdo announced last year.