Cyprus: Greeks Bearing Gifts

The dire appeals from the blockaded Turkish Cypriots in the coastal village of Kokkina insisted that they were near starvation. As women and children huddled in caves, their gaunt menfolk stood guard in the trenches. Then last week, down the road from Nicosia came trucks loaded with nine tons of food donated by the very man who had ordered the blockade, Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus.

Instead of cheering, the Turkish Cypriots cursed. One shouted, “We are Turks, and we will die before we accept food from Makarios!” Another grumbled that the food was probably poisoned. The convoy commander, a young Finnish lieutenant of the U.N. peacekeeping force, was appalled. “Your attitude is inhuman,” he said. “There are starving babies in Kokkina.” A Turk replied, “The whole blockade is inhuman. We don’t want Makarios to make propaganda by giving us food. We will leave it on the road or throw it into the sea.”

Sunshine & Smiles. What Makarios was really trying to feed the Turkish Cypriots last week was a carrot, in hopeful contrast to the stick he had been applying to them for weeks. His bullying efforts to force the Turkish minority to lay down its arms and accept Greek Cypriot rule had failed, even boomeranged against him in the form of Turkey’s threat to invade. Now, suddenly, the wily prelate was all sunshine and smiles. He got along famously with the new U.N. mediator, Ecuador’s ex-President Galo Plaza, replacing the late Sakari Tuomioja of Finland, who died this month of a stroke. An athletic, handsome man of 58 who fights bulls for fun and is a constitutional optimist, Galo Plaza is proud of his Spanish ancestry. He said to Makarios, “I have Mediterranean blood in my veins and Mediterranean caution about believing all I am told.” Smiled Makarios, “Ah, then we will understand each other.”

With a wave of his hand.,, Makarios ended the food blockade of all Turkish Cypriot communities and benignly agreed not to charge excise duties on a food ship due in from the Red Crescent —Turkey’s Red Cross. He went even farther, promising 1) to tear down all Greek Cypriot fortifications if the Turkish Cypriots would do the same, 2) financial aid and personal security to any refugees who wish to return to their native villages, and 3) general amnesty.

Priestly Poker. His peace offensive met much the same reaction as his food. In Turkey a government spokesman said, “This poker-playing priest just can’t be believed.” On Cyprus the Turkish community thought it was all a maneuver to impress the U.N. Security Council, currently meeting on the Cyprus question. With only 12,000 lightly armed fighting men opposing 35,000 Greek Cypriots armed with tanks and artillery, the Turkish Cypriots are reluctant to give up their sandbagged entrenchments or scatter to their bombed and burned-out villages.

But Galo Plaza said jubilantly, “Things are going in the right direction.” He was also heartened by the imminent U.N. decision to continue the peacekeeping mission on Cyprus for another three months, and he cheerfully outlined his own strategy to newsmen. Unlike Tuomioja and U.S. Special Envoy Dean Acheson. Galo Plaza intends to do his mediating on Cyprus instead of in Geneva, and to concentrate on Makarios instead of on the governments of Turkey and Greece.

Spoiling Food. At week’s end Makarios flew to Athens bearing yet another gift—a silver dish as a wedding present for Greece’s King Constantine and his new Queen, Anne-Marie of Denmark. Declaring that “my aim has always been and always will be enosis,” that is, union of Cyprus with Greece, Makarios met with Premier George Papandreou, and both announced “complete accord” on Makarios’ peace offering, though the Greek government was obviously concerned about the official Cypriot delegation currently in Moscow seeking aid from Nikita Khrushchev.

Peace was indeed wonderful, but at week’s end it had not much reduced suspicion and racial hatred on Cyprus. Now food was pouring in from the Red Crescent and the U.N., and there was enough to eat even at Kokkina. But the nine tons of food sent by Makarios lay untouched beside the road, slowly spoiling in the hot sun. On one crate, an infuriated Turkish Cypriot had scrawled, “Don’t play politics with our stomachs.”