The Washington Elite Views the Cyprus Problem, 1964

There are few better examples of how the American news media forms opinions in Washington than the article below. Written by someone with complete access to, and a uniformly shared perspective with, the U.S. State Department, the article reflects how easily the U.S. national-security bureaucracy shaped the views of the public in pre-Vietnam years. Noyes= article completely conformed to the U.S. Government=s views of the Cyprus problem, and is particularly telling in its Cold War perspective and its dismissive treatment of Makarios.  Clearly, Dean Acheson or someone else close to the process fed Noyes this story. The Washington Star, which has since stopped publication, was as influential as any newspaper in Washington at that time.

By CROSBY S. NOYES
Foreign Affairs Editor of the Washington Star

If there is a certain bitter quality to Dean Acheson's forthcoming report to President Johnson on his efforts to reach an agreement on Cyprus, it would be understandable.

Mr. Acheson quite rightly prides himself on his diplomatic virtuosity. If his eight hard weeks of negotiating in Geneva had ended in success, he would have been hailed throughout the West as nothing less than a. diplomatic miracle-worker.

And he came close. Though some details of the long palaver are still secret, the main lines of an agreement were beginning to emerge with reasonable clarity. So are the reasons why the negotiations ended in failure, at least for the time being. Quite deliberately, the solution of the explosive Cyprus problem was approached indirectly through Greece and Turkey, the two governments primarily interested. The Cypriot government itself took no part in the talks.

This approach recognized the fact that Greece and Turkey, as responsible members of NATO, have an interest in settling the Cyprus problem that transcends their interest in the Greek and Turkish communities on the island.

No possible solution could satisfy both the Greek and Turkish communities on the island itself. But if a deal could be worked out that satisfied Greece and Turkey, it was believed that the rest would be relatively simple.

Makarios Succeeded

This approach unfortunately failed to reckon with the trouble-making capacities of Cypriot President Makarios, and in the end the wily and tenacious Archbishop succeeded in wrecking the negotiations at the very moment that a solution seemed in sight.

The main points of this projected agreement are now known. What has been called the AAcheson Plan" for Cyprus was really a whole series of wide-ranging proposals which covered almost every conceivable formula for a solution. In the end they boiled down to four broad propositions.

The first of these was union of Cyprus with Greece.

This union the "Enosis" for which Greek Cypriots have been fighting for years -- was accepted as the essential basis of a solution. It would have the obvious advantage -- to Turkey as well as Greece -- of placing control of the island under a responsible government with wider interests and obligations than those of the Greek- Cypriot community.

Enosis would recognize the predominant rights of the Greek majority in Cyprus. It would also allay what has been for the Turks a besetting concern: The danger that the island, so strategically placed athwart their main approaches to the sea, might fall under Communist control.

The second essential of the proposed plan was renunciation by Turkey of its right of intervention in the affairs of the island. The right which was granted to it under the treaty of 1959, along with the British and Greeks, would no longer be valid after Cyprus became an integral part of Greece.

The two other main problems revolved around the question of protection for the rights of the Turkish minority in Cyprus and compensation for Turkey.

The first of these, strangely enough, offered no insurmountable difficulty in Geneva. On the problem of protecting the Turkish community -- which is what the whole problem in Cyprus is essentially about -- most of the elements of an agreement were pretty well pinned down. The idea of a partition of the island which Cypriot Turks have been demanding was apparently shelved.

Turkish compensation involved the question of a permanent Turkish military base on Cyprus. Its purpose was not, as some reports have suggested, to protect the Turkish community, but quite simply a recognition of Turkey=s very valid strategic interests in the island.

It was on the issue of the Turkish base that the talks bogged down and finally stuck fast. But for a time it looked as though the Greeks were willing to go a long way toward arriving at a solution.

Base Proposal

It is reported from Geneva that in the face for a Turkish demand for sovereign rights over the base, the Greeks went so far as to offer a 300-square-mile area in northeastern Cyprus on a 50-year lease. Under this proposal the base would have been jointly administered by both Greece and Turkey. Other formulas discussed included the idea that the base should be a part of the NATO framework.

It is still somewhat unclear how such a formula for agreement, if it had been accepted by Greece and Turkey, could have been imposed on an unwilling President Makarios.

The Archbishop pays lip-service to the idea of Enosis and secretly opposes it: His own solution is unfettered sovereignty for Cyprus under a Aunitary@ (i.e. Greek Cypriot) government headed, quite naturally, by himself. His opposition to any military bases on the island, including that of Britain, is adamant.

Still if agreement had been reached, it is quite that President Makarios would have been unable to resist it. Enosis is an immensely popular issue with the great mass of Greek Cypriots. If worst came to worst, there are some 10,000 Greek troops in Cyprus and a number of popular "leaders," such as former terrorist Gen. George Grivas, who would be happy to let the archbishop know where the real power lies.

Still, it didn't happen that way. As The Star's European Correspondent George Sherman reported from Geneva yesterday, the talks took a sudden turn for the worse when President Makarios, after loudly calling for Russian protection against Turkish air attacks, make a sudden visit to Athens last week for talks with Greek leaders.

The indications are strong that the Greek government caved in before the Archbishop's rather crude bit of blackmail. The impression is strong that a deal was made in which the Greeks agreed to stall the negotiations in return for Archbishop Makarios calling off his appeals for Russian intervention.

Even here, it seems, there was something of a double-cross from the. Archbishop. His recent agreement with Egypt's President Nasser looks to diplomats here very much like a deal for Russian arms aid through the back door. It is not expected that any real Egyptian arms aid will be provided which the Russians do not offer to make good. It is true of course that the main terms of the Acheson plan are still open. New modifications are possible and an agreement may still be within reach. It is also quite possible that Mr. Acheson will return to Geneva if the prospects improve even slightly. However, with realistic pessimism, it is realized here that time is likely to run out very soon in Cyprus.

A series of foreseeable crises loom in the immediate future. Greek Cypriots are still promising to oppose the landing of fresh Turkish troops on the island and the Turks are still planning to send them anyway within the next few days.

In Turkey, some Greek workers face the loss of their right to work before the end of the month, the government having withdrawn their permits. Their forced return to Greece will hardly serve to sweeten the political climate in Athens.

In Cyprus itself, tensions are rising again. President Makarios' economic squeeze on isolated Turkish villages brought them close to the famine point and greatly increased bitterness throughout the island.

In short, the possibility for a new and violent explosion seems infinitely greater at this point than a happy consummation to the work of Dean Acheson set out to do in Geneva. The impression here is that a golden chance has been missed and that it may well not come again.