Last week, Cypriot Foreign Minister George Lillikas boarded the plane bringing him to Malta for a meeting of Euro-Med ministers leaving the local media with the impression that former Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis had signed away the island’s oil and gas wealth in a secret deal with the Bush family.

Lillikas also accused Rolandis outright of failing to consult either the Cabinet or the Attorney General about a Memorandum of Under-standing (MoU) signed with American company Crest in the late nineties. Neil Bush, the younger brother of US President George Bush, was the co-chairman of Crest at the time.

But Rolandis described the accusations as a “complete lie”.

Lillikas, who made the statements at Larnaca airport before his departure for Malta, said that when he succeeded Rolandis as Commerce Minister in 2003, the first thing he did was cancel the deal to “safeguard the interests of Cyprus”.

News organisations ran with the story that Lillikas had revealed how he saved Cyprus from the Bush family’s exploitation of the island’s natural wealth without clarifying that the comment related to an entirely different issue.

The Rolandis-Crest MoU had nothing to do with oil and gas exploration off the island’s coast and everything to do with the importation of natural gas by pipeline from Syria.

In addition, Rolandis told the Cyprus Mail, not only was the MoU not legally binding, but also that it would never have gone ahead. “The final advice was that Cyprus should not use a pipeline to transport natural gas but should import liquid natural gas instead,” he said.

Asked why he thought Lillikas had launched an attack seemingly out of the blue, and especially to cite accusations that could easily be disproved, Rolandis said: “Mr Lillikas is always unpredictable. Maybe he got up on the wrong side. I am puzzled and stunned but sometimes when people say something there is the hope that some of it may stick.”

The former minister said it probably had something to do with recent articles he had written about the proposed oil and gas and his suggestions how the wealth could be shared with the Turkish Cypriots.