CYPRUS: Deadlock

At Nicosia airport, a British field marshal stepped off an R.A.F. Hastings transport, eyed the awaiting refreshments, turned to a cluster of local dignitaries and snapped, “Let’s cut the cocktails and go into town.” Sir John Harding had taken over as the new governor of Britain’s crown colony of Cyprus.

Within an hour, Governor Harding telephoned Archbishop Myriarthefs Makarios, leader of the Greek Cypriot drive for enosis (union) with Greece, and arranged to meet him next day on the “neutral ground” of Nicosia’s Ledra Palace hotel. Then the governor conferred in fast succession with 35 local officials, called in newsmen to tell them that he would have a “man-to-man talk” with Makarios and would “lay all my cards on the table.”

The Ledra Palace hotel apparently set aside its cardroom for the meeting. Genially, the tall, full-bearded archbishop greeted his tough-minded antagonist, quickly offered a compromise plan: the Greek Cypriots would give up their demand for an immediate plebiscite if the British would promise the islanders eventual self-determination on a gradual but steady schedule. Once the Cypriots’ right to decide their own future is recognized, said the archbishop, he would be willing to collaborate with colonial authorities in framing an interim constitution. By his acts—and omissions—in the growing dispute over Cyprus, the archbishop had proved his titular power to speak for almost all 410,000 Greek Cypriots, and, to a great extent, for mainland Greeks as well. Sir John sent Makarios’ offer to London.

While cables passed back and forth, fresh violence boiled up. In one town masked terrorists disarmed, bound and gagged five constables; in another a gunman shot and critically wounded a British mining engineer. In still another a Greek Cypriot policeman fell dead from an assassin’s bullet. In the week’s worst incident, as reported by one newsman, chivalry caused a British retreat. As British troops approached a village near the Baths of Aphrodite, they were met by a solid phalanx of island women, Aphrodite’s daughters shielding Ares’ stone-hurling sons. Thus protected, the men showered stones on the British Tommies, forcing them to retire.

At week’s end Sir John Harding personally delivered London’s reply to the archbishop: a stern no. Britain, as immovable as any of Aphrodite’s daughters, was not yet ready to loosen its grip on its eastern Mediterranean military command post by conceding the right of self-determination.