CYPRUS 1964: SUBVERSION OF A MISSION

by Lieut. Commander Martin Packard, MBE RN (Ret=d)

"Capital invested in conflict prevention is capital well spent. In humanitarian, financial and political terms, conflict prevention is much cheaper than peacekeeping or rebuilding societies after a violent conflict." Max van der Stoel, 1994.

" ... to act in the interest of preserving international peace and security, to use its best efforts to prevent a recurrence of fighting and, as necessary, to contribute to the maintenance and restoration of law and order and a return to normal conditions. " (Excerpt from Security Council Resolution 186 of 4.3.64, establishing the mandate for UNFICYP.)

This paper is based upon personal experience in establishing field mediating operations in Cyprus in 1964, at a time when the window of opportunity for reconciliation and for the safeguarding of a unitary state was still open.

Cyprus represents a triumph of peacekeeping at the expense of conflict resolution: the British-created 'Green Line= preserved, the sovereign state of Cyprus left divided.

The UN came to Cyprus too late and in the wrong role. It should pre-1960 have helped to broker the formulation of a viable independent statehood based on a workable constitution supported by international guarantees of human rights; it should pre-1964 have been involved in pro-active diplomacy aimed at internationally supported conflict resolution; it should in 1964 have actively and vigorously supported the restoration of the unitary state and the neutralisation of inter-ethnic violence. It could have been successful in each of these roles, but it was precluded from the first two and neutered in the the third: instead the agenda was set by UK/US concepts as to their national interests in the area.

I believe that the real interests of international peace would have been better served by a defence of Cypriot sovereignty. I believe that UNFICYP was godfather to a UK/US strategy based upon the mistaken belief that NATO aims would best be met through the island's subjection to control from Athens and Ankara. My experience also suggests that the process of reconciliation was actively subverted within the framework of UN operations.

Thirty years after my time as a mediator certain questions remain for me unanswered. For whom was I working in Cyprus? For the UN, whose objectives I was pursuing and in whose stated principles I believed, or for the British Government, which was paying me? Whose interests were paramount? Those of the Cypriot people, or those of NATO's strategic planners? How were the decisions taken that decided the fate of the island? By the UN and responsible government ministers or by maverick secret service cowboys, unencumbered by proper national oversight? How, in reality, was control of the UN mission exercised? Was there, realistically, ever a chance that the UN could successfully pursue a policy in Cyprus that was considered by the UK and US as contrary to their interests?

My history in respect of that period is unusual, in that I first developed and led a mediating operation on behalf of the guarantor powers and then did the same, in a different format, for the United Nations; I acted as an effective private conduit between President Makarios and Vice-President Kutchuk (to whose joint service I regarded myself as seconded) but was ejected from Cyprus when London discovered the success of this process. The justification for this paper is the relevance of my experiences to some of the wider issues that still confront the UN in the peacemaking context.

The makings of a mediator.

It is as a devotee of the UN that I criticise its failure in Cyprus. I am a profound believer in the original concepts of the United Nations and in the need for world and regional bodies appropriate to the provision of proactive diplomacy, of conflict resolution and of military peacekeeping.

But I also believe that the UN must ultimately be judged as a moral entity, not merely as a crucible for the balancing of big- power interests (and I am alarmed that in this particular forum ethics have generally seemed to be equated with naively). I do not wish to see UN peacekeepers acting as mercenaries in a new form of western-conceived global colonisation: I do not believe that a UN peacemaker can be properly qualified without the remit of a morally sustainable objective.

Fifty years ago I joined the Royal Navy as a 13-year-old cadet. In that same year I attended in London, by special invitation, an inaugural session of the United Nations, and I became from that time a disciple of the organisation's concepts and charter.

I was further involved with the UN in 1950, when I was in action in Korea within minutes of the outbreak of hostilities. I served there as an officer in the UN forces throughout the first year of the war.

In 1963 I was intelligence adviser to Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean (a British naval command) and to NATO's COMEDSOUEAST, in which capacity I was responsible for assessing political developments in the Eastern Mediterranean and for drafting advisory papers for staff consideration. I thus was strongly focused on the background to events in Cyprus as the situation there deteriorated towards inter-communal violence.

Certain other elements of my background had an effect on the sense of mission that I felt as a mediator in Cyprus. My father was a canon of Christ Church in Oxford and the family background taught me to suppose that morality should be a key determinant in the actions of right-thinking men. I was a regular officer in the Royal Navy at a time when that service was tolerant of individuality and liberalism. I was married into a Greek family whose friends included senior ministers in the Athens government of that time, so that I had talked about Cyprus with the Foreign and Defence Ministers of Greece. I was a close friend of the socialist leader in Malta, Dom Mintoff, which gave me access to the ideas and aspirations of key nationalist figures in the countries of the Mediterranean basin. These elements had combined to produce in me a sympathy for those who sought for valid national independence and a distaste for those who believed that big-power status still conferred a justification for subverting the sovereign rights of smaller nations. Furthermore every practical analysis suggested to me that a subversion of the unitary state in Cyprus would ultimately redound to detriment of western interests in the area.

I departed for Cyprus fortified with the gift from my family of two books: 'Bitter Lemons' by Lawrence Durrell and a Quaker treatise on mediation.

Background to ethnic conflict.

The population of Cyprus is overwhelmingly of Greek origin. There is an 18% minority of Turkish origin which until 1963 was broadly distributed across the island. At the beginning of the century there were about 350 mixed villages but this number was progressively eroded by peaceful demographic change until by early 1963 it was down to about 120.

Until 1950 the Greek and Turkish racial groups co-existed in a relative harmony that was only occasionally disturbed by local political agitation or by echoes of nationalism from Athens or Ankara. There was little intermarriage but a common sense of ' Cypriotness '.

Uniquely in Cyprus the process of British decolonisation was circumscribed by Whitehall's ideas of how best to achieve the permanent retention of its strategic assets in the island. The British used the Turkish Cypriots as an ally in the struggle against EOKA and promoted the concept of separate minority status.

Cypriot independence, when granted in 1959, was conditional on the ceding of sovereign base areas and on the imposition of a highly flawed constitution which provided the 18% minority with community status and allowed it to hold the governance of the island to ransom. The Cypriot people played no significant part in drafting the blueprint for their own future and they were unassisted at that time by any international body with a will to support their sovereign rights.

With mutual goodwill and under benevolent patronage, which the UN might have supplied, even the 1959 constitution could have worked. Without those two ingredients it failed to do so, and the result was increasing inter-ethnic friction. Efforts by a sympathetic British High Commissioner to broker a revision of the constitution were disowned by London. There was interference, and a promotion of violence, from abroad. Each side believed that it would be attacked by the other, and secretly armed accordingly. Extremists on both sides, still pursuing their pre-independence aims of enosis or taksim, became vociferous. At Christmas 1963, after a random incident of violence, there were armed attacks by a parastatal Greek-Cypriot faction (with links to the Greek/US intelligence services) against elements of the Turkish-Cypriot community. The Turkish-Cypriots reacted to what they took to be a general attack upon them: the Greek-Cypriots reacted to what they took to be a general insurrection. Inter-communal communications collapsed. Atrocities were committed. Either from harrassment, fear or political pressure the Turkish Cypriots abandoned some of the mixed villages. Nevertheless, at that stage the split was not irrevocable.

UK (and NATO and US) interest in the island was centred on the importance of its military and intelligence-gathering bases there and on the perceived paramountcy of relations with Ankara. The UK and US were also concerned at the power of the left-wing and supposed that in an independent unitary state there would in due course be pressure for the bases to revert to Cypriot sovereignty.

Potential options were for continuance of the independent unitary state, with improved safeguards for the human rights of the Turkish Cypriot community; separation of the communities, by partition or federalisation; or absorption of the island into NATO through the process of union with Greece. The UN and the world community formally and properly endorsed the former option. However it is clear that there existed a covert intelligence agenda for partition, based on the questionable supposition that western interests in the area could best be safeguarded through this route. This view was vigorously expounded to me by President Johnson's emissary, George Ball, when I acted as his guide during his fact-finding visit to the island in February 64. Unfortunately I assumed that I had successfully demonstrated to him both the viability and the huge advantages of reintegration and I failed to realise that the die was already cast.

As the leading guarantor power, Britain deployed troops throughout the island in response to the breakdown of civil order at Christmas 1963. I was seconded to General Young's staff a few days later. By the time I arrived in Nicosia violence had subsided, but a state of relative anarchy existed in the countryside and isolated hostage-taking and acts of intimidation continued. I was mandated by General Young to develop a field mediating process, using officers from the Cyprus-based contingents of the Greek and Turkish armies to constitute a series of tripartite patrols.

The mediating process.

I was given no written instructions. I believed in the Quaker concept of mediation. General Young accepted that my primary loyalties would be to the process of conflict-resolution. We agreed that my task was to reestablish the functioning of the unitary state, to eliminate tensions and to ensure the protection of human rights, with a responsibility to the Cypriot people as a whole. I took my role to be that of active peacemaking, in parallel to the military's peacekeeping. It appeared to me logical that the peacekeeping forces, then wholly British, and the aid agencies should act in response to the analyses and recommendations arising from a tripartite mediating group.

The tripartite mediating formula proved extremely effective. The attachment to my group of outstanding Turkish and Greek officers who developed a commitment to the peacemaking process contributed largely to this success. They added the authority of Ankara and Athens, whereas I was known to have the support of both Makarios and Kutchuk as well as the mandate of the British peacekeeping force.

The situation at that point was very malleable. There had been widespread hostage-taking, but we were able to recover most of those hostages who were still alive and to determine the fate of many of those who had died. There had been serious atrocities, of which I was able to acquire most of the details upon the strict condition that this knowledge would not be publicised and only used in support of mediating initiatives. We were able to restore a sufficient sense of security for the Turkish Cypriot evacuation of the remaining mixed villages to be halted. During this period we also established a constructive rapport with the secret military leaders on the two sides.

The situation was made vastly more complex by the interplay of local, ethnic, national and international issues. The cloak of ethnic dispute was used to cover the settling of long-standing parochial and personal disputes. Effective mediation required acquaintance with every aspect of communal concern, from the smallest dispute over grazing rights to the historic origins of ethnic aspiration. It also required a sympathy for Cyprus and a clear commitment to Cypriot sovereignty.

It quickly became apparent that central government in Nicosia was receiving inadequate and distorted information from outlying regions, where local strongmen and extremists were often pursuing their own agenda, and that this was radically hampering the restitution of an effective national administration. By rendering my reports privately and directly to the leadership of the two communities, rather than through UK military and political chains of command, this weakness was substantially eliminated: Cypriot leadership received an unbiased picture of events in outlying regions and the patrol could thereby increase the effectiveness of its bridge-building. At the same time the fact that Athens and Ankara had access to the reports of the Greek and Turkish officers on the team paid positive dividends.

When the UN took over the peacekeeping role in March, I was the only British mediating officer asked to continue. The UN made an unfortunate (perhaps disastrous) decision that the attachment of Greek and Turkish officers to the mediating process should be terminated. In other patrols they were replaced by civilian UN interpreters (none of whom had any experience of Cyprus), and I believe that this greatly reduced mediating effectiveness. In my case I coopted former Cypriot civil servants onto my team and obtained documents of support from President Makarios and Dr Kutchuk and a passe partout from Mr Georgatzis: these allowed me, uniquely, to take Turkish Cypriots into any area under Greek Cypriot control and vice versa: the effective linkage with the Cypriot authorities was thereby enhanced, but the direct influence of Athens and Ankara was regrettably and significantly diminished.

After five months, first under a British hat and then under a blue beret, my mediating group had become a primary (though officially unacknowledged) conduit between the two sides, working at a level below that of UN Secretary General's special representative, Dr Galo Plaza. The negotiating process included the overt and covert leaderships of both sides at every level, from the humblest village council up to the President and Vice-President.

Agreement was reached in June 1964 for a trial start to the reintegration of the two communities, supported by a policy (elicited with considerable difficulty from President Makarios) of positive discrimination in favour of the Turkish Cypriots. It will be asked why TMT and the Turkish Cypriot leadership accepted this programme. We had privately taken Turkish-Cypriot village leaders back to certain villages and demonstrated that their property had been well maintained and that the Greek-Cypriot villagers would welcome their return. This had led to huge pressure from the villagers, who were profoundly unhappy as refugees, to return. It is likely that the return was sanctioned by TMT in cases where the villages concerned were close to the perimeter of what they conceived as their northern enclaves. My own supposition was that if a trial return could be adequately protected and the concessions agreed by Makarios implemented then the process of reconciliation and reintegration would acquire an unstoppable momentum.

Twenty-four hours before the first villagers were due to move back I was summarily removed from the island on orders of the British military. The agreement was aborted. I was flown out of Cyprus, like a dangerous virus, as the sole cargo in an American C.47.

The explanations given for my removal ranged from a statement that my life was in danger to the supposition that I had seduced Mr Galo Plaza's girifriend. Another, thoroughly sober and highly respected, mediator was soon afterwards evicted on a spurious allegation of drunkeness. Earlier, in late February, a brilliant and highly effective Turkish officer attached to my unit. Major Sail Sepici, was badly injured under mysterious circumstances, and removed from Cyprus.

Subsequently I was told that I was naive to have supposed that a 'Cypriot solution= would be allowed to stand if this was seen as conflicting with UK/US strategic interests. Later General Carver, the British deputy commander of UNFICYP, claimed that I had supposed that the problems of Cyprus could be solved through a resolution of inter-communal problems at village level. In fact I saw communal reintegration as one basic building-block in a complex multi-layered process, but I believed that success in this aspect would fundamentally undermine the logic for partition.

I believe that in the summer of 1964 the UN lost a real opportunity to play an effective role in the preservation and defence of a unitary and independent state. From then onwards UNFICYP served principally as a UK/US surrogate in a successful policing of the Green Line, thereby benefitting UK/US interests (as perceived by the intelligence community), to the detriment of those of the Cypriot people.

I do not know whether any reintegrational policy would have been allowed by the outside powers to succeed, but I am certain that there was nothing inherent in internal Cypriot affairs to prevent such a resolution.

The needs of that time would have best been met by pro-active UN initiatives, by an independent UN intelligence mechanism and by the provision of an executive whose primary loyalties lay with the UN rather than with their national governments. The objective of the UN in Cyprus should have been to shield the island against outside pressures, including those being applied to Greek-Cypriot extremist organisations through Greek intelligence mechanisms. I am not aware of any UN study in depth having been applied to these issues in Cyprus, either then or later. I myself subsequently was commissioned by the Commonwealth Relations Office to write an acount of the field mediating process. That report, which I believed to be innocuous, was confiscated and embargoed by the security services immediately after its delivery to the CRO, and presumably it was never delivered to the UN.

Ingredients of conflict-resolution.

Agreement from all sides for a programme of communal reintegration had no sooner been reached than the key mediating team was thrown out of Cyprus, not because of any clash with Cypriots or with UN policy or with the declared aims of any interested government, but (presumably) because of a covert UK/US agenda. The UN per se did not in fact control the key processes of its own mission.

Conflict-resolution may be considered in terms of three elemental ingredients:

(a) actual or perceived pre-conditions productive of or affecting the conflict;

(b) intelligence acquisition, analysis, option-formulating and decision-taking by the mediating agency relative to the conflict; and

(c) mediation and execution of a plan to resolve the conflict.

In this case the UK had figured largely in the pre-conditions; the UK controlled the UN's forward intelligence mechanism; and the UK held the key role in the UN's military executive.

That said, Cyprus had many ingredients that gave it vulnerability to political dispute. Defined ethnic (and religious) groupings, with the majority arrogant of its perceived status; strong imperial interest and influence from Greece and Turkey; a determination by the former colonial power, supported by the US, to secure retention of its military installations; a strong left- wing political movement; an inexperienced government trying to work from a seriously flawed constitution; armed extremists on both sides.

Beyond this, an already fundamental inter-ethnic faultline had been further deepened by Britain when it had drawn in the Turkish Cypriot minority as an ally against the Greek Cypriot drive for enosis and when it promoted the idea of its separate community status. This status had been bolstered by the subsequent constitution. The groundwork for ethnic separation had thus already been laid.

All of this called for sympathetic and pro-active diplomacy from an outside agency dedicated to the concept of a democratic, multi-ethnic, multi-religious society, a defence of human rights and the safeguarding of national sovereignty. The UN should have fulfilled this role. Instead it was excluded from Cyprus' independence negotiations, when it might have promoted the formulation of a fair and workable constitution. It was then excluded from a preemptive diplomatic role during the period of 1960-63, which might have forestalled the conflict that was then germinating. An imperative of that time was a determination by the UK and US governments to avoid the internationalising of the situation, on the grounds that no opportunity must be allowed to the Soviet Union to involve itself in "the Cyprus question'.

The UN therefore inherited the situation only when Britain deemed that it was no longer able to act as an effective 'honest broker=. By that point, however, the options were solely for reactive intervention.

Intelligence and conflict analysis.

The UN heads of mission were Senor Galo Plaza as political emissary and General Gyani as military commander. Deputy military commander and head of the British army contingent was Mike Carver, a forceful and highly intelligent general who was then regarded as the star of the British military hierarchy.

For as long as I was in Cyprus the UN depended almost wholly on the British intelligence mechanism for the acquisition and processing of raw intelligence and for the formulation of option- papers. The UN thus leaned on a mechanism which had its origins in the period of colonial administration and in the struggle against EOKA, whose former political leaders were now the controlling ministers in the Greek Cypriot government. It had, I would suggest, a considerable bias in its sympathies and a leaning towards partitional solutions.

I see no reason why the UN should not be capable of creating its own wholly independent intelligence mechanisms and of protecting the analytic process from outside pressures. I suggest that in 1960-64 an independent UN intelligence mechanism, sympathetic to the sovereign aspirations of small states but equally cognisant of the geopolitical interests in the region of the major powers and of neighbouring countries, could have advised the Secretary General as to actions that would have led to an equitable resolution of the situation in Cyprus within parameters that were both realistic and consonant with UN principles .

Instead a British-controlled intelligence structure with a deep bias towards ethnic separation fed analyses and option-papers through a tough and Cyprus-experienced British general to a UN team which had no previous exposure to eastern Mediterranean politics.

Execution.

I decided that I could be effective in my appointment only if my primary loyalty was to the mediating process and to the Cypriot community. In consequence I kept to myself the key details of the direct intermediary work between Archbishop Makarios and Dr Kutchuk and between the secret army leaders of the two sides. I communicated with Dr Galo Plaza through his executive secretary, who sympathised with my position and who had my trust: I thereby justified my own initiatives, although I was doubtful that Galo Plaza would have actively opposed General Carver. It was my strong belief that once the programme of reintegration was started it would develop an internationally defensible and unstoppable momentum and that it was preferable not to place it on a formal footing until that time.

The requirements for the plan from the UN side, basically the acceptance for a limited period of a civil policing and escort role, were fully in accord with general UN policy but were rejected by General Carver. That rejection, and the elimination of a key mediating conduit, was sufficient to condemn Cyprus to outside intervention and division, Greece and Turkey to unnecessary and destructive antagonism and the UN to a long, costly and largely inequitable stay in Cyprus.

I should have done more and better but my position was very exposed. I was a junior officer in conflict with the UK military command. I was faced with a powerful UK/US agenda for Cyprus of which I was then only dimly aware. My belief was that an independent, unitary Cyprus (with a revised and workable constitution that was acceptable to Ankara and to the Turkish Cypriots and with base facilities leased to NATO), properly safeguarded by the UN against outside interference, would have been a powerful stabilising factor for the eastern Mediterranean and for Greek-Turkish relations. Sadly I was to find that that line no longer had strong proponents in the UK or the US.

Before I left and after my going there were requests from President Makarios, from Dr Kutchuk and from the UN that my initiatives be continued, but these pleas were all rejected by London. I subsequently received a private invitation from Makarios to visit Nicosia for discussions with him, but the British authorities embargoed the trip and informed me that I was persona non grata. I was later asked from Nicosia to create a link through which the President's views could be delivered sympathetically to London.

UNFICYP.

During my time in Cyprus I met a number of UN executives who were brilliantly right for the job. I met a larger number who were second-rate time-servers. And I met brilliant men who were wholly wrong for the work, and who did damage in consequence. In general a large and costly bureaucracy was erected to administer the defence of the British-created "Green Line@ while opportunities for Cypriot-involved structural mediation were neglected.

I met officers from Finland and India and Sweden and Ireland who were prepared to make a genuine commitment to UN principles and to work from a moral basis. Perhaps it was easy for them because they had no national interests involved, but I felt that there was a qualitative difference between them and seconded personnel from the major powers.

I appreciate that considerations of an individual's loyalties and character will be more relevant to peacemaking and preventative diplomacy than to peacekeeping. I look forward to the creation of a competent supranational peacemaking executive whose loyalties and dedication will be solely to the charter and morality of the United Nations.

I also believe that caring matters. I cared passionately about Cyprus and its people and I suffered with the horrors to which they were exposed. Peter Young, the general who directed me to establish mediating operations, also cared deeply, and I believe that his presence and his attitudes were strong contributors to the possibility for reconciliation in 1964. General Young was removed in part because he was considered by London to have become 'unduly sympathetic to the Cypriots. His successor was apparently unaffected by such sympathy as he may have had and the UN's potential for good was diminished in consequence.

I hope that UN selection procedures have since become more carefully geared to specific requirements in the administration of peacekeeping operations and the make-up of mediating units, but I recognise the limitation of its options.

Summary.

If I have anything useful to contribute to this debate it is because I was out on my own, at the front end, at a decisive moment in the history of one particular UN peacemaking effort.

Events in Cyprus in 1964 were full of lessons that would have been applicable to Bosnia in later years. Sadly there is no sign that the UN ever applied itself to an analysis of those events or to an application of those lessons.

Windows of opportunity are usually small in such circumstances, but the window was still narrowly open while I was there. I believe that if the UN had possessed the right mechanisms and the right people at that moment, and adopted the right policies, Cyprus would have reintegrated its communities, isolated the practitioners of violence, established security for its minorities, satisfied the concerns of Ankara, found good-neighbourly solutions to its administrative problems and been spared invasion and dismemberment. In that case Cyprus would by now have become, for all of its people, the richest and most dynamic area of all the eastern Mediterranean.

But the peacekeepers evicted the peacemakers. The British still have their bases. Despite the availability of a federal formula which would guarantee minority rights and security, Ankara feels obliged to maintain a huge army in foreign territory, to the detriment of its own European objectives and of Turkish-Cypriot aspirations for a better quality of life. (Of which Turkish-Cypriot emigration rates stand as testimony.) Confidence-building measures' are promoted which tend to legitimise an unjust status quo. The people of Cyprus are all losers.

Outsiders, including Henry Kissinger, characterised Cyprus in 1964 as presenting one of the world's most intractable problems. That may have been so from the viewpoint of an outside subverter of Cypriot affairs or of someone unable to believe that Greeks and Turks are capable of constructive integration. But from the viewpoint of principle it was not so hard. The sovereign rights of the Cypriot people deserved to be defended against outside interference, but instead London and Washington and Athens and Ankara all pursued interventionist policies that combined to result in violence and division.

The UN congratulates itself on the effectiveness of its peacekeeping role in Cyprus, but in this it has successfully defended an unjust, foreign-contrived communal separation that could have been avoided. Sadly in the peacemaking role, which should have had primacy, the UN's mission was subverted and an opportunity for success, with huge potential dividends for the region, was singularly lost.

From a speech by Lt. Commander Martin Packard delivered to the conference, AThe United Nations: Peace, Security, and Development Beyond the Year 2000,@ held at Delphi in May 1995.

Notes and Glossary

Max van der Stoel - High Commissioner of National Minorities. Keynote speech to CSCE

Seminar on Early Warning and Preventative Diplomacy, Warsaw 19.1.94.

UNFICYP - UN Forces in Cyprus.

Commander in Chief, Mediterranean - Senior British military commander for the Mediterranean. A naval command position based in Malta, which during 1963/4 was filled by Admiral Sir John Hamilton.

COMEDSOUEAST - Commander of Nato Forces, South East Area. NATO command position, based in Malta, covering the south east flank of NATO.

Dom Mintoff - principal architect of Maltese independence and long-serving prime minister of that island.

Re mixed villages - Richard Patrick: Political Geography and the Cyprus Conflict 1963-1971. Ontario 1976.

EOKA - Acronym for Greek Cypriot organisation committed to the armed struggle for the union of Cyprus with Greece.

Re strength of left wing in Cyprus - in 1963/4 the voting strength of the Communist Party of Cyprus was over 35%.

British High Commissioner - Sir Arthur Clarke.He returned to UK for health reasons at the end of 1963 and was replaced by Cyril Pickard, as Acting High Commissioner.

General Young - General Peter Young, commander of British forces in Cyprus in 1963 and of the peacekeeping force mounted by the guarantor powers to restore civil order in December 1963.

Greek & Turkish army contingents - Under the terms of the guarantor arrangements for the 1959 independence agreement the Greek and Turkish armies maintained garrison contingents, each of about 1,000 men, in separate barracks close to Nicosia.

Dr Kutchuk - Vice-President of Cyprus and leader of the Turkish Cypriot community.

Mr Georgatzis - Polycarpos Georgatzis, Greek Cypriot Minister of the Interior.

CRO (Commonwealth Relations Office) - the CRO, rather than the Foreign Office, was the British government department responsible for UK representation in Cyprus. Due to the Foreign Office's responsibilities in Athens and Ankara there was considerable overlap in dealing with Cyprus-related problems. My report was commissioned by Sir Cyril Pickard, who had returned to London following his short-term appointment as Acting High Commissioner in Nicosia.

Mike Carver - General Sir Michael Carver, later to become Chief of the Imperial General Staff-He relieved General Peter Young as commander of the British peacekeeping force in February 1963. Regarded as one of the outstanding British military commanders of the century.