Lebanon and Cyprus have signed a deal to demarcate their maritime border, ending a deadlock that had persisted for nearly two decades.
The agreement was announced during a visit by Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides to meet Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in Baabda.
The two Eastern Mediterranean countries had reached a draft agreement over their maritime boundaries in 2007, but it was held up in the Lebanese parliament for years and only ratified by the government last month.
Mr Christodoulides, who was the first senior foreign official to visit Lebanon after Mr Aoun was elected in January, said it was a “historic agreement” that sent a strong message of regional co-operation.
He hailed it as “concluding an issue pending for many years and now look forward to what our countries can jointly create”.
The Cypriot President said the two countries were seeking World Bank advice on the feasibility of electricity interconnection.
“This agreement should be a foundation for wider regional co-operation, replacing the language of violence, war, and ambitions of domination with stability and prosperity,” Mr Aoun said.
Mr Aoun said the deal opened the way for joint exploration and potential energy projects.
The deal was rebuked by Turkey, which is the only country to recognise the breakaway Turkish-Cypriot administration in northern Cyprus. The southern Greek-Cypriot government in the south, which is officially known as the Republic of Cyprus, is internationally recognised and concluded the deal with Lebanon, which covers the whole of the divided island.
Turkey accused Cyprus of “disregarding the Turkish Cypriots” in the process.
“We would like to remind that the RoC does not represent the Turkish Cypriots or the entirety of the island and that it has no authority to make such disposals concerning the entirety of the island,” Turkey's Foreign Ministry said.
In October 2022, Lebanon and Israel signed a landmark US-mediated maritime border deal in what was seen as unprecedented at the time given the two states remain technically in a state of war.
Despite that much-heralded deal, there have yet to be any commercially viable finds in any of Lebanon's offshore blocks.
Beirut is desperate to find and explore any offshore gas and oil opportunities given its stagnant economy and poor state revenues. In 2019, Lebanon plunged into once of the worst economic crises in modern history, in a collapse blamed on decades worth of mismanagement and corruption by the country's ruling elite.
Wednesday's deal means Lebanon only has one remaining neighbour with which it needs to demarcate its maritime border, which is Syria.
