THE CYPRUS EXPERIENCE

10 POLYVIOS G. POLYVIOU • THE CYPRUS EXPERIENCE the most furiously contested issues of the Cyprus problem, as on so many other issues, Greek and Turkish Cypriots have disagreed. But the follow- ing points are not open to dispute. The Zurich accord was a compromise negotiated between the Greek and Turkish Governments in the absence of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Meetings between the Greek and Turkish foreign ministers had begun in early December 1958 at the UN and contin- ued at the NATO meeting in Paris in late December 1958. The talks between the Greek and Turkish Governments continued throughout January 1959, and in early February 1959 the then Greek and Turkish Prime Ministers, C. Karamanlis and A. Menderes, met at Zurich where they drew up the out- lines of a comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus dispute. The Agreement was announced in a joint Graeco-Turkish communiqué issued on 11 February 1959. The British Government, which had already made it clear that any agreement reached between Greece and Turkey would be acceptable to it provided it could maintain sovereign bases and a military presence on the island, was informed, and it was only then that Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders were fully brought into the picture. The Greek Cypriot leader Archbishop Makarios, at a meeting in Athens with the Greek Government, accepted, with some reluctance, the principles of the Graeco-Turkish accord, since it was now clear that outright rejection of the plan and continuation of the armed struggle against the British would mean partition of the island. Even so, as he himself said later, he expected further negotiations to take place at the London Conference, which had already been convened. At this Conference at Lancaster House in February 1959, Archbishop Makarios did indeed raise a number of objections and expressed strong misgivings with regard to certain provisions of the Zurich Agreement. He accepted the Graeco-Turkish accord as a basis for the solu- tion of the Cyprus problem, he stated, but he could not accept without further discussion the details of the Zurich Agreement in which he had had no input. But the Greek Prime Minister told him that further negoti- ation was not possible, that the Greek Government had committed itself in the eyes of its allies and could not go back on its word, and that if the Archbishop did not accept the Zurich Agreement as it stood, Greece would abandon both him and Cyprus. The Turkish and British Foreign Ministers could not accept any further discussion or negotiation. They demanded that the Archbishop should either accept the Agreement or reject it, in which event, it was already clear, Cyprus would in all likelihood be partitioned.