CYPRUS: Hostile Partners

For every Greek murdered, an Englishman will be murdered. We offered peace, but our enemy thought -we were weak and provoked us.

With that warning signed, Colonel George Grivas, leader of the Greek Cypriot terrorist underground, EOKA, last week ended his truce with the British authorities who rule embattled Cyprus. It came as news to many Britons on the island that there ever had been a “truce.” In the previous week one British soldier had been killed and four wounded in a seven-hour gun battle in which they killed four EOKA men holed up in a barn near Famagusta; on the streets of Nicosia, a British airman walking hand-in-hand with his wife was murdered by three EOKA gunmen, who fired five shots from a passing taxi. From Royal Air Force headquarters on Cyprus had gone the order to airmen: “Keep your eyes open … be ready to shoot at once . . . and shoot to kill.”

Massive Boycott. Britain’s “partnership” plan, introduced last June, had run into massive resistance from the Greek majority. Under it, Cyprus would get limited self-government with separated Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot legislatures; Turkey and Greece would each appoint a special representative to advise the British Governor. Turkish Cypriots, who had been holding out for partition, grudgingly accepted “partnership.”

But the Greek majority, charging that the plan would lead to partition, had responded by boycotting all efforts to bring them into it. In sporadic outbursts of violence, unleashed by both Greek and Turkish Cypriots, 165 people were killed.

In a last-ditch attempt to break the deadlock. Governor Sir Hugh Foot flew to London with a new plan to bring back Archbishop Makarios, the bearded, 45-year-old Greek Orthodox Ethnarch of Cyprus and leader of the Greek Cypriot movement for enosis (union with Greece). This would give Foot a Greek Cypriot with whom to negotiate. And Makarios might be persuaded to restrain EOKA’s gunmen, he argued. Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd, who had a hand in Makarios’ expulsion from the island in 1956, did not agree. He admitted that Makarios would have to be allowed to return to Cyprus eventually—but not until the archbishop gave advance proof that he would curb violence. The Cabinet compromised: Foot glumly went back to Cyprus last week with authority to permit Makarios’ return at some indefinite future date (and whether violence ceases or not). But, meanwhile, Foot was ordered to push ahead with the British plan whether the Greek Cypriots like it or not.

Biggest Yet. In Athens, where he lives in a suite in the Petit Palais hotel, Makarios issued a statement denouncing both the British and the Turks and demanding U.N. intervention, but later said he would like to return to Cyprus because he had some, “but not very great,” hopes that he could help toward a settlement. Crucial date was Oct. 1, by which time Turkey is scheduled to appoint its official adviser to Cyprus’ Governor. Said Makarios: “If the Turkish representative goes to Nicosia and Sir Hugh enforces the British plan, it will be the beginning of the biggest troubles yet.” Best British hope was that, at the last minute, the Greeks might agree to cooperate with the plan rather than be left out of it entirely.