A woman stands next to candles outside the presidential palace in Nicosia during a vigil for those killed during a huge explosion that tore through a naval base on July 11. (AP Photo / Petros Karadjias)

(CNSNews.com) – Tens of thousands of people demonstrated outside the presidency in the Cypriot capital Nicosia on Monday night, the latest in a series of protests triggered by the island’s worst peacetime military disaster a week earlier, the explosion of an impounded Iranian weapons cache.

Public anger over the July 11 blast at a naval base has already seen the resignations of the defense minister and a top military officer. Those were followed on Monday by the departure of the foreign minister but many Cypriots want communist President Demitris Christofias to step down as well.

The explosion killed 13 people, including the chief of the navy, damaged hundreds of homes and knocked out a power station generating more than half of Cyprus’ electricity.

At the center of the public furor is the government’s handling of almost 100 shipping containers laded with Iranian-origin munitions seized from a ship two and a half years ago.

The Russian-owned, Cypriot-flagged and Iranian-chartered Monchegorsk was carrying its deadly cargo from Iran to Syria when intercepted by U.S. warships in the Red Sea in January 2009.

As reported at the time it was allowed to proceed but after it reached Cyprus’ southern port of Limassol, authorities offloaded and confiscated the munitions.

Israeli officials suspected the weaponry was destined for Hamas or Hezbollah, which have strong links to Iran and Syria. A U.N. Security Council panel concluded the shipment was in violation of a 2007 resolution imposing arms sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear activities.

Iran complained about the seizure, telling the Security Council in an April 2009 letter that “despite some politically motivated allegations made by certain media and others about the cargo of the M/V Monchegorsk vessel, we wish to stress the consignment of the said ship falls within the framework of normal trade transactions, and any allegations to the contrary are baseless.”

Since its seizure the cargo was stored at the Evangelos Florakis naval base near Limassol, stacked in a field and exposed to the elements. Following last week’s blast two official inquiries have been launched.

Cypriot government documents leaked to local media revealed that military officials had for two years been warning about the risks posed by the stored munitions, but that for “political reasons” nothing was done. Just six days before the blast, a meeting was held to discuss the matter after it was noticed that one of the containers was warped.

A Cypriot marine police patrol boat is seen alongside the container ship Monchegorsk, anchored off Limassol on Friday, Jan. 30, 2008. (AP Photo/Andreas Lazarou, File)

‘Cargo of death’

The evident unwillingness to take steps to dispose of the munitions may have been a result of Christofias’ reluctance to upset Syria or Iran.

Leaked classified U.S. diplomatic cables attributed to the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia at the time of the Monchegorsk incident described Cyprus’ concerns about taking possession of the munitions, saying the government “is clearly feeling the heat and wants to avoid a confrontation with Syria and Iran.”

One of the cables, among the trove released by Wikileaks, explained that after Cyprus in 2006 interdicted a ship carrying proscribed missile radar equipment from North Korea to Syria, the Assad regime had retaliated by approving a direct ferry link from a Syrian port to a port in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), an entity whose 1983 declaration of independence was not recognized by any country apart from Turkey.

The ferry link was viewed by Cyprus as a diplomatic blow and – the cable said – it was concerned that a fresh dispute with Syria over a seized cargo could result in Damascus further upgrading the status of the TRNC.

The cables indicated that the Christofias government in the end only impounded the cargo after coming under significant diplomatic pressure from the Security Council and European Union.

They also revealed that the U.S. had offered to help Cyprus deal with the seized items “both diplomatically and technically” but that the Cypriot government had demurred. Germany had offered to remove the munitions from Cyprus too.

Wire service reports from April 2009 said that Britain had also offered to help Cyprus to dispose of the cargo.

Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou last week denied that Cyprus had rejected proposals from other countries to help get rid of the materiel.

The Cyprus Mail on Friday quoted Socrates Hasikos, a lawmaker in the conservative Democratic Rally party and a former defense minister, as saying Christofias had no choice other than to resign.

“Due to his obsession and efforts to maintain good relations with the presidents of Syria and Iran, he did not heed the call of specialists and experts, even foreign governments, to remove the cargo of death from Cyprus,” Hasikos said.

Writing in the same newspaper on Sunday, columnist Loucas Charalambous accused the president of “sick anti-American fixation which pushes him to satisfy the whims of all the anti-U.S. dictators of the world.”

“It is obvious what happened. In order to keep happy his friend, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the U.S.-hating president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he kept the deadly containers here and rejected all offers to have them taken elsewhere,” Charalambous charged. “He kept them here for safe keeping, presumably hoping to be able to deliver them to Syria at some stage. We all saw the horrendous results of this policy.”

The funeral of Cypriot navy chief Commodore Andreas Ioannides, who was killed with 12 others in a massive explosion at a naval base, takes place in Limassol on Wednesday, July 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

‘Unhelpful foreign policy’

Cyprus, a member of the European Union but not NATO, has been divided since a Turkish invasion of the island's northern part in 1974, triggered by a Greek-inspired coup. Its eastern Mediterranean location along trade routes linking Europe and the Arab world and close proximity to the Middle East have made relationships with nearby countries like Syria and Lebanon important to the island nation.

The Soviet-educated Christofias’ election in 2008 made him the E.U.’s only communist head of state. Early foreign policy steps saw him establish closer ties with President Hugo Chavez, and Venezuela opened its first embassy in Cyprus in June 2009.

Visiting Cuba to open a Cypriot Embassy in Havana three months later, Christofias described himself as “an old comrade and a friend of Cuba and the revolution” and was awarded Cuba’s highest honorary distinction “in recognition of his solidarity and respect towards Cuba and its people.”

An April 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia to Washington ahead of a meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Cypriot counterpart referred to “unhelpful foreign policy turns” noting that Christofias “has sought to warm relations with Havana, Caracas, Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus.”