New uncertainties for divided island of Cyprus

SIR – Yet another international attempt to settle the Cyprus problem (report, July 8) has collapsed in acrimony.

In 1974, the short-sighted stupidity of the Athens junta in mounting a coup to unseat Archbishop Makarios presented Turkey with the ideal grounds for military intervention.

The Turks claimed then (and ever since) that their action was justified by the Treaty of Guarantee of 1960 (the provisions of which were afterwards ignored) and by the need to protect the Turkish Cypriot minority.

In the many negotiations of the past 47 years, the Turks have insisted on their right of intervention under the guarantee and especially the need to retain their troops on the island to ensure protection of Turkish Cypriots.

While there is validity in these arguments, there is a general failure to appreciate (or at least acknowledge) the strategic importance of Cyprus to Turkey itself – not for nothing has the island been described as a dagger pointing at the mainland’s under-belly.

The fundamental, if harsh, reality that needs to be faced both by Greek Cypriots and the international community is that the Turks will not readily surrender in the foreseeable future the major strategic prize that had been presented to them.

Future negotiations that ignore this fundamental reality are likely to hit the buffers yet again. In the meantime UN peacekeepers (including British) patiently continue patrols of the Green Line. But for how much longer?

Chief of Staff, UN Force in Cyprus, 1972-74

Banbury, Oxfordshire