Lyndon Johnson Sends George Ball to Cyprus, 1964
George Ball was one of America=s premier diplomats in the 1960s. He was under secretary of state in 1964 when he became involved in the Cyprus problem. This excerpt is from his memoir. It demonstrates very clearly how the United States regarded the ACyprus problem,@ mainly as a venue of superpower intrigue. The Americans were concerned about Cyprus becoming a AMediterranean Cuba,@ and their diplomacy was geared toward bringing Cyprus under control of NATO, possibly through Adouble enosis.@ This 1982 excerpt from Ball's memoir, The Past Has Another Pattern, is also valuable for insights into how high-level diplomacy was conducted.
Threat of Greek-Turkish War
Watching from Washington, we could see that open warfare was imminent. Since the Turkish Cypriote population was suffering the greater casualties, Turkey was on the verge of intervening. To defuse the situation, Sir Duncan Sandys, the British Secretary of State for the Commonwealth and Colonies, proposed a peace plan calling for, among other things, the establishment of a British-controlled neutral zone in Nicosia to keep the two communities apart. Though that temporarily stowed the fighting, the two communities remained at sword's point. The Turkish Cypriotes declared the constitution dead, implying that, since the two communities could not live together, partition was the only solution. Makarios demanded the abolition of the London-Zurich Accords and particularly their provisions for intervention by any of the three guarantor powers.
Cyprus was merely one more step in Britain's painful shedding of empire, and London no longer had the will or the resources to preside over such a quarrel. Thus I was not surprised when, on January 25, 1964, the British ambassador, Sir David Ormsby-Gore, called to tell me that Britain could no longer keep the peace alone and that an international force should be established on Cyprus as soon as possible. Such a force, the ambassador insisted, could be "broadly based" yet limited to detachments from NATO nations. The British needed, most of all, our diplomatic support and a United States contingent with supplies and airlift for the international force.
I stated emphatically that the United States did not want to get involved: we already had far too much on our plate. I was sick at heart at our deepening embroilment in Vietnam; at the same time, we faced mounting troubles in Panama, had an irksome involvement in the Congo, were disputing with the Soviets over Berlin, and foresaw mounting difficulties with Indonesia. But the British were adamant. They would no longer carry the Cyprus burden alone, even though involving the United Nations risked giving the Communist countries leverage in that strategically placed island. The United Nations would dither and the Turks would not wait; tired of continued outrages against Turkish Cypriotes, they would invade. Then we would have a full-scale war between two NATO allies in the eastern Mediterranean. Reports from Ankara were already indicating that the Turks considered their ultimate military intervention as almost inevitableCout of their hands and to be determined by events.
When I discussed the question with our UN ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, he responded with far more heat than I had expected. During the "troubles" he had stayed for three days in Archbishop Makarios's residence and he regarded his former host with total contempt. The Archbishop was, he said, a wicked, unreliable conniver who concealed his venality under the sanctimonious vestments of a religious leader; the only way to deal with Makarios, Stevenson assured me, was by "giving the old bastard absolute hell." In all the years I had known Adlai I had never heard him speak of anyone with such vitriol. "I have sat across the table from that pious looking replica of Jesus Christ," he said, "and if you saw him with his beard shaved and a push-cart, you would recall the old saying that there hasn't been an honest thief since Barabbas."
The United States Becomes Involved
I met with Secretary Robert McNamara at five that afternoon (January 25), and we reviewed the Cyprus problem in all its complexities. Though Bob was as unhappy as I at any broadening of our responsibilities, he was fully aware that an exploding Cyprus could not only endanger our Mediterranean position but undermine the whole southern flank of NATO. I discussed the matter later that evening with President Johnson. His reluctance came through loud and clear, but he quickly grasped the seriousness of the Cyprus problem and directed me to come up with an acceptable solution.
I told Bob McNamara that before committing ourselves to the combined force we should insist on three conditions: that the duration of the force be limited to three months, that the Turks and Greeks agree not to use their unilateral intervention rights for three months, and that they agree on a mediator who was not a representative of any of the guarantor powers but from another NATO European country. Finally, we would insist that the American contingent not exceed twelve hundred men, with the British agreeing to put in four thousand and the balance of ten thousand to come from other European nations. Meanwhile, David Bruce, our astute ambassador in London, was assuring me that we had no option but to participate; otherwise, no other country would take action, and the Turks would inevitably move. That advice was rein- forced when, that same day of January 28, 1064, Turkish Prime Minister Ismet Inonu told our ambassador in Ankara, Raymond Hare, that the Turks were going to invade unless we gave them some kind of an answer by the next morning.
In their anxiety to commit us, the British leaked my three conditions to the press prematurely, and I had to deal with an outraged President. Moreover, I was annoyed that Duncan Sandys, without telling me, had on February 3 tried out our Anglo-American proposal for a NATO force on Cypriote Foreign Minister Spyros Kyprianou, who was attending the London conference. When Kyprianou reported our proposal to Nicosia, Makarios rejected it out of hand. If we were to work with the British, actions had to be carefully coordinated without the premature exposure of our thinking.
Meanwhile, violence continued in Cyprus with hostages taken by each side; on February 4, a bomb exploded in our embassy in Nicosia. Since the situation had now reached a critical flash point, we clearly needed someone on the spot not accredited to any one of the five nations actively involved. Thus, on February 8, I flew to London. At the same time, a second level of activity was under way in New York, where Stevenson was valiantly resisting the efforts of the Cypriote ambassador to the United Nations to get a UN force appointed.
At this moment the respective positions of the parties were: The Turkish Cypriotes demanded partition and the right to govern their own community; they also insisted on preserving Turkey's right to intervene under the London-Zurich Accords, since otherwise the Turkish Cypriotes might be wiped out by their Greek Cypriote neighbors, who outnumbered them four to one. The Turkish government in Ankara supported the Turkish Cypriotes, while putting special emphasis on the preservation of Turkey's right to intervene by force. The Greek community on Cyprus wanted union with Greece (enosis), but, at least for tactical purposes, was demanding a fully independent Cyprus run by the Greek majority. The Greek government in Athens pressed for enosis.
Viewed from Washington, the issues were clear enough. Cyprus was a strategically important piece of real estate at issue between two NATO partners: Greece and Turkey. We needed to keep it under NATO control. The Turks would never give up their intervention rights or be deterred from invading by the interjection of a UN force which they would regard as an instrument of Soviet or Third-World politics and subject to manipulation by Makarios. My first and most urgent task was to coordinate our activities with the British and make sure that Duncan Sandys did not again act unilaterally. Makarios must be approached in person and not through his foreign minister, who, in his own right, had no authority.
Mission to the Center of Conflict
I had no illusions that I could easily shake Makarios out of his intransigence, but I had to try. If he finally turned us down, I planned to say to the guarantor powers: take the problem to the Security Council but understand that America will supply no component for any UN force. Though I recognized that this might trigger a Turkish invasion, I proposed to tell Makarios that, if he continued to block a solution that would eliminate Turkey's reason for intervening, we would not protect him from a Turkish move.
I made these points to Sandys when we met on February 9, 1964. I told him I was planning to go to Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus and described the strategy I would follow. He and I discussed all the solutions we could think of, including all permutations and combinations that might improve the plan's marketability. Since the President had lent me an airplane, I asked Sandys to make the tour with me, bill, presumably out of a desire to limit Britain's responsibility, he declined. Later that same night I saw Cypriote Foreign Minister Kyprianou and tried to sound him out on the Archbishop's real intentions.
I went first to Turkey to meet with Prime Minister Ismet Inonu. I had looked forward to the meeting not only because of its relevance to my mission but because of the Prime Minister's history and personality. Inonu, who in his early life had been known as Ismet Pasha, was a legendary figure. Chief of staff to Kemal Ataturk during the war against the Greeks in the early 1920s, he had taken the name Inonu from a village where he won two battles. Serving as Turkey's first Prime Minister from 1923 to 1937 and then, after Ataturk's death, as its President from 1938 to 1950, he had led in transforming Turkey into a modern state. Now at eighty, once again Prime Minister, he provided stability and strength to a nation beset with troubles.
A small wiry man, Inonu's quiet voice projected force and conviction. He did not try to conceal his deep worry about the direction of events on Cyprus. We must, he insisted, move swiftly: Turkish patience was running out. Given the excited state of public opinion, any overnight flare-up of killing on the island might force the Turkish military to intervene. Turkey would, of course, have an overwhelming military advantage. Not only was it far larger and better armed than Greece, but Cyprus was outside the range of Greek fighter planes. As I expected, Inonu was as direct in his approach as Makarios was devious. So long as nothing was done to impair Turkey's right of intervention to protect the Turkish Cypriote population, the Turkish government was prepared to go along with the Anglo-American proposal for a NATO force.
If I felt reassured that Turkey had a strong and responsible government, Greece had no government at all. Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis had resigned the year before, when King Paul had rejected his advice, and, since then, there had been a succession of caretaker governments. Though the caretaker Prime Minister, Ionnis Paraskevopoulos, received me courteously, he could make no commitments, saying only that the Greek government would probably approve any plan first approved by Makarios.
Meetings with His Beatitude
I arrived to find Nicosia an armed camp with barbed wire demarcating a so-called "green line" separating the Greek and Turkish communities. Access from one zone to another was restricted to designated check points. Jeeps containing British forces with tommy guns and Cypriote police roamed the area and patrolled the neutral zone that lay between the separate rolls of barbed wire.
On my first meeting with His Beatitude (as Archbishop Makarios was addressed) on February 12, I was accompanied by Joseph Sisco, the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs; his deputy. Jack Jernagan; and Frazer Wilkins, the United States Ambassador to Cyprus. British interests were brilliantly represented by Sir Cyril Pickard, Assistant Under Secretary of State for the Commonwealth Relations Office, who was, at the time. Acting High Commissioner for Cyprus. Makarios received us on the porch of his residence, formerly the residence of the British colonial governor. Resplendent in the full regalia of his ecclesiastical office, he wore a tall black head-covering with a mantia in the rear, while about his neck was a gold chain, from which depended a large medallion known as a panagia. It contained a representation of Christ holding a book in his left hand while the fingers of the right hand were frozen in the gesture of giving blessing. Resting on the Archbishop's chest, the medallion symbolized a "confessor from the heart" to remind the wearer that he was always to have God in his heart. I saw few signs of that in the days that followed.
After the traditional tiresome pleasantries, the Archbishop led us to his study, where he went through an astonishing striptease, removing his gold chain, his head covering, and his robes until reduced to shirt sleeves. Newspaper pictures of the Archbishop, with his beard and clerical trappings, had given me an impression of a venerable ecclesiastic. Now I found myself facing a tough, cynical man of fifty-one, far more suited to temporal command than spiritual inspiration. (As I commented later to President Johnson, "He must be cheating about his age; no one could acquire so much guile in only fifty-one years.") Since he had spent some months in a seminary near Boston, he spoke only slightly accented English, and his conversation was marked by a whimsical, often macabre humor that both amused and appalled me. Of medium height, with eyes that peered through narrow eyelids, he seemed about to relish the fencing match in which we were to engage.
Our morning meeting was relatively calm and uneventful. As we explained our respective positions, Makarios gave nothing away. When we parted for lunch, he carefully rerobed, putting on all his paraphernalia for the photographers who assaulted us on the porch: when we returned for our afternoon meeting, he once again repeated his strip- tease.
I can describe the afternoon session only as "bloody." The Archbishop was unrelenting in repeating a litany he knew I would never accept. The whole matter must be submitted to the UN Security Council; and the United Nations must guarantee the political independence and territorial integrity of Cyprus. That meant, as I told my British colleague later, that Makarios's central interest was to block off Turkish intervention so that he and his Greek Cypriotes could go on happily massacring Turkish Cypriotes. Obviously we would never permit that.
Much to my delight, my British colleague, Sir Cyril Pickard, proved tough and resourceful. In the great tradition of British proconsuls, he was deeply dedicated to stopping the wanton killing and returning peace to the island. Nor did he bother with diplomatic politesse in expressing his contempt for the bloody-mindedness that Makarios and his government were displaying. After Pickard had denounced the Archbishop in devastating language for the outrages inflicted on the Turkish Cypriotes, I spent the next forty-five minutes telling off Makarios and his ministers. I spoke, as I telegraphed the President that night, "in a fashion remote from diplomatic exchanges," describing in lurid detail the consequences if he persisted in his cruel and reckless conduct. The Turks, I said, would inevitably invade, and neither the United States nor any other Western power would raise a finger to stop them. Though Makarios tried to conceal his discomfiture, I had the odd feeling as we left the room that, as I reported to the President, "even his beard seemed pale."
That night I conversed with the President and Secretary Rusk through the scrambledCand hence secureCteletype in the embassy, telling them that, in my view, a blow-up was exceedingly possible and that overwhelming pressure must be brought on Makarios "to frighten him sufficiently to consider some move to halt the killing."
Three or four vignettes of my Cyprus days stand out sharply in my memory. A massacre took place in Limassol on the south coast in which, us I recall, about fifty Turkish Cypriotes were killedCin some cases by bulldozers crushing their flimsy houses. As Makarios and I walked out of the meeting together on the second day, I said to him sharply that such beastly actions had to stop, that the previous night's affair was intolerable, and that he must halt the violence. With amused tolerance, lie replied, "But, Mr. Secretary, the Greeks and Turks have lived together for two thousand years on this island and there have always been occasional incidents; we are quite used to this." I was furious at such a bland reply. "Your Beatitude," I said, "I've been trying for the last two days to make the simple point that this is not the Middle Ages but the latter part of the twentieth century. The world's not going to stand idly by and let you turn this beautiful little island into your private abattoir." Instead of the outburst I had expected, he said quietly, with a sad smile, "Oh, you're a hard man, Mr. Secretary, a very hard man!"
At another point in our conversation on the second day, I spoke so heatedly at his apparent indifference to bloodshed that I heard myself saying, "For Christ's sake. Your Beatitude, you can't do that!"Crealizing as I spoke that it was scarcely an appropriate diplomatic reply, even to an irreligious ecclesiastic. Also on the second day, when we sat down around the table, he said, with obvious amusement, "I know you're a famous lawyer, Mr. Secretary. Mr. Spyros Kyprianou, my Foreign Minister, is also a lawyer and so is Mr. Glafkos Clerides, my Minister of Justice." Then he added with a chuckle, "I think I must be the only layman in the room."
On the third dayCand final morningCthe Archbishop and I had a quiet talk alone in his study. Rather whimsically, he said, "I like you, Mr. Secretary, you speak candidly and I respect that. It's too bad we couldn't have met under happier circumstances. Then, I'm sure, we could have been friends." A brief pause and then he said. "We've talked about many things and we've been frank with one another. I think it right to say that we've developed a considerable rapport. Yet there's one thing I haven't asked you and I don't know whether I should or not, but I shall anyway. Do you think I should be killed by the Turks or the Greeks? Better by the Greeks, wouldn't you think?"
"Well," I replied, "I agree that we've talked frankly to one another about many things and that we have established a rapport. But as to the matter you've just raised with me. Your Beatitude, that's your problem!"
One final incident during my stay in Cyprus sticks in my mind. Quite by accident while I was in Cyprus, British Prime Minister Sir Alex Douglas-Home, and British Foreign Secretary "Rab" Butler, were paying a working visit to President Johnson. Each night I carried on a long teletype conversation directly with them and Secretary Rusk. Late in the night of the second day, I teletyped that I wanted to make one final effort to get the Archbishop in line by offering a new variant of our proposal. After discussion back and forth in which both the President and Prime Minister took part, I received their blessing to go ahead. The next day, I played my final card but still could not budge Makarios. I sent a message around the diplomatic circuit advising of what I had done and received an angry rocket from Duncan Sandys, vehemently complaining that I had put forward a proposal that differed from those on which he and I had agreed. "I hope," he wired, "that such conduct will not be repeated." Apparently he was still smarting because I had rebuked him when he had put our proposals prematurely to Kyprianou.
I replied with a personal message that he had no basis for a sense of outrage. The proposal I made to His Beatitude was, I wrote, approved by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, adding, "Should I seek higher authority?" Sandys replied promptly with a message apologizing for the "misunderstanding" and inviting me to lunch with him at his house Sunday in London. It was a pleasant lunch, and he and I have remained friends to this day.
Continued Efforts to Avoid Disaster
Convinced that only time and events could shake the Archbishop, I flew back to Ankara to see Inonu and tell the Turks that we had not given up; in going forward through UN channels we would make sure that the United Nations took no action derogating from their intervention rights under the Accords. Inonu reluctantly agreed but emphasized that if there were further serious violence on the island, Turkey would no longer stand still.
On the night of February 14, I flew to London intending to meet with my British colleagues the next morning. Because the embassy residence was filled with other visitors, my staff and I were housed in a West End hotel, the Grosvenor House. I was tired and disheartenedCso deeply concerned at the danger of an imminent Greek-Turkish war that I could not sleep. After several hours of fretting over the problem, I devised one last card to be played. At three in the morning, I aroused my staff and began to dictate. By six o'clock, with a draft in shape for final typing, I decided to walk over to the chancery and get ready for the day. On the way, I bought a copy of the Telegraph, which had my picture on the front page. When I reached the chancery, the marine guard refused to admit me. "You claim to be the Under Secretary of State, but how do I know?" Inspired, I showed him a copy of the newspaper. It proved an adequate laissez-passer.
I promptly telegraphed the President advising him of my proposal, which, I said, I was putting to the British solely as an idea of my own that did not in any way represent the views of my government. Makarios, I argued, would never agree to a peace-keeping force even half-way adequate to do the job, and, "if he does agree, it will only be after the Cypriotes have exhausted all pettifogging possibilities to try to get the Security Council to nullify the Turks' rights of intervention." "The Greek Cypriotes," I wrote, "do not want a peace-keeping force; they just want to be left alone to kill Turkish Cypriotes." Meanwhile, I emphasized, the Turks would not wait for a protracted Security Council hassle.
My new plan sought to create a peace-keeping force not requiring the consent of the Makarios government. To do that, the three guarantor powersCBritain, Greece, and TurkeyCshould take joint action to exercise the rights of intervention provided by the London-Zurich Accords. They should move forces into Cyprus simultaneously. Those forces would be broken into small units that would be billeted together. All patrols would be organized on the pattern followed in Vienna during the four-power occupation after World War IIConly this time, three, rather than four men in a jeepCand all operations would be conducted together. The force would stay in Cyprus until an effective international force, within the framework of the United Nations, had not only been created but was actually on the ground, or until a political settlement had "been reached and translated into a viable organic document."
There were, as I saw it, a number of advantages to the scheme. It would assure the Turks that their Cypriote community was protected while the UN proceedings plodded their weary way. It would avoid any suggestion of a partition and discourage communal massacres, since members of the two communities would not have to fear the intervention of a hostile force. The three powers could answer international criticism on the ground that they were acting under the terms of the treaty.
If the British went along with my scheme, I had no doubt that Inonu would accept it. But the British wanted above all to divest themselves of responsibility for Cyprus; my scheme would reinject them into the mess. As a result, I returned to the United States without anything clearly in place to stop the war.
Falling Back on the United Nations
When I reported to the President, he agreed that the United States had gone as far as we should to try to deflect a tribal conflict. Now our only available course was to work through the United Nations. On February 15, Britain and Cyprus requested an emergency session of the Security Council, and the debate opened on February 18. For the time being, the day-to-day action shifted largely to Ambassador Adlai Stevenson, although I retained the overall direction of strategy.
There is no point in recounting the wearisome maneuvering that went on during the UN proceedings. We wanted to install a UN force as quickly as possible, while assuring that the resolution did not nullify the intervention rights of the guarantor powers, since the Turks would not stand still for that. We sought also to keep the Soviet Union as far as possible out of the action.
After masterful politicking by Stevenson and our UN mission, the Security Council, on March 5, resolved to create a peace-keeping force and provided for the appointment of a mediator. Though we hailed the resolution as avoiding the immediate danger of a blow-up, none of us saw it as more than a temporary respite. The parties most directly interested interpreted the resolution in opposite ways: Makarios regarded it as foreclosing the Turkish right to intervene; the Turks saw it as preserving their intervention rights.
Weakness of Greek Government
Meanwhile, Greek politics took a discouraging turn. when, on February 19, seventy-six-year-old George Papandreou won a landslide victory. As head of the Center Union party, he had been in the opposition for half a century; he knew how to oppose but had neither taste nor talent for positive action. A hopelessly weak leader, he found it expedient to play along with Makarios and the advocates of enosis. To a large extent, as I saw it, he was under the influence of his son, Andreas Papandreou, for many years a professor of economics in several American universities, who was trying to gain a foothold in Greek politics by playing closely with the Communist bloc. Oddly enough, in spite of his venomously anti-American line, many of my American academic friends still defended him as an "old boy" former member of the professors' club.
Greece was seized with a spasm of anti-British and anti-American frenzy; our embassy in Athens was subjected to mass demonstrations, our Information Office windows smashed and pictures of Lyndon Johnson burned. The President telephoned me almost plaintively to ask "Why are those Greeks burning my picture?" as though he thought it a highly personal affront. Apart from injured feelings, he worried that such incidents might alienate the Greek-American vote in the forthcoming November elections.
Threat of Turkish Action
On March 13, the Turkish government announced that unless fighting on the island ceased, it would intervene immediately, and the United Press news ticker reported that Inonu had given the interested nations twenty-four hours to reply before he attacked. Meanwhile, Canada, which offered the best hope of providing peace-keeping troops, refused to move until assured that some other country would also contribute units. We put Stockholm under great pressure, and right after lunch I reported to the President that the Swedes would announce that afternoon that they would send a force to Cyprus. The plan was to notify the Canadians, whose parliament was meeting at 2:30, so Canadian troops could be in the air within the next twelve hours.
With that assurance, the Turkish government withdrew its demarche. A Finnish diplomat, Sakari S. Tuomioja, was appointed UN mediator, and within a few days, the UN peace-keeping force seemed on the way toward restoring order. Meanwhile, I enlisted Dean Acheson to undertake quiet mediation, primarily between Athens and Ankara. Not only was he a brilliantly skillful negotiator but he had personal prestige in the two capitals because of his central role in formulating the Truman Doctrine when the United States first came to the defense of Greece and Turkey in 1947. I called Acheson at his home in Washington on February 27; he came to lunch the following day, and I found him willing to consider a mission that would inevitably be complex, frustrating, and of indefinite duration. He knew the high stakes involved, because he fully understood the importance of stability on NATO's southern flank.
In spite of the arrival of the UN force, fighting again broke out. On April 13, Prime Minister Papandreou of Greece mischievously announced a campaign for self-determination for Cyprus, which would, of course, mean turning the island over to the Greek Cypriotes. When the UN mediator. Ambassador Tuomioja, returned in discouragement from talks with Greek, Turkish and Cypriote leaders, Secretary-General U Thant put forward his own peace plan. He also appointed an ex-President of Ecuador, Galo-Plaza Lasso, to undertake direct negotiations with the leaders of the two communities. Using the logic-chopping for which the UN is notorious, he distinguished Galo-Plaza's duties from those of Tuomioja on the grounds that Galo-Plaza would seek to restore order while Tuomioja sought a long-term solution.
Forestalling an Imminent Invasion
On Tuesday, June 2, Ruth and I were hosts at a reception for Prime Minister Eshkol of Israel and his wife. With Secretary Rusk in New Delhi for the funeral of Prime Minister Nehru, I was Acting Secretary. That night we received a "critic" message from our ambassador in Ankara, Raymond Hare, that the Turkish Security Council had decided to invade Cyprus. Turkish forces were already deployed in the Iskenderun area with the mission of establishing a "political and military beachhead" on Cyprus. By such a show of force, the Turks hoped to negotiate a satisfactory settlement.
The news came at an extremely awkward time. I was scheduled to leave the following eveningCJune 4Cfor a meeting with President de Gaulle in Paris, then go on for a Cyprus discussion with the British on Monday ending my trip at the closing sessions of the UNCTAD Conference in Geneva. Secretary Rusk returned on the morning of June 4 and undertook to prepare a message for the President to send Inonu, which, it was agreed, I would review before departing at 7:30 that evening. When I saw Rusk before leaving for the airport, he showed me a draft on which he was still working. "That," I said, "is the most brutal diplomatic note I have ever seen." Indeed, the Secretary, aided by Assistant Secretary of State Harlan Cleveland and his deputy, Joseph Sisco, had produced the diplomatic equivalent of an atomic bomb. "I think that may stop Inonu from invading," I said, "but I don't know how we'll ever get him down off the ceiling after that." The Secretary looked at me with a sweet smile. "That'll be your problem," he said. The letter stated:
Turkish military intervention, the letter continued, would lead to a clash with Greece. It would cause violent repercussions in the and wreck any hope of UN assistance in settling the island crisis. It would "lead to the slaughter of tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriotes." The letter continued,
Because this was certain to create an explosion in Ankara, I discussed with Secretary Rusk the desirability of my going straight to Ankara, but we agreed it would be awkward for me to break my appointment the next day with President de Gaulle. During the night, I telephoned to Washington once or twice from my plane to see if there had been any second thoughts.
After a long visit with de Gaulle I went on to London for a meeting on Monday with the British Foreign Secretary during which we discussed Cyprus, among other things. Then I flew to Geneva to address the UNCTAD Conference, which was just winding up three months of meetings with nothing accomplished. After my speech on Wednesday night. Dean Rusk telephoned to tell me that the President was worried about Cyprus and thought more should be done; Rusk would call me later. I knew we had arranged for General Lemnitzer to fly to Ankara as soon as we received the news of the impending invasion and I had learned that, after receiving the President's letter, Inonu had indefinitely postponed the invasion. But I was worried about the wounded state of our relations with the Turks. . .
[The next day] I met with Prime Minister Papandreou in Athens at seven. I did not expect much to come from that session and nothing did. He lacked the force to make hard decisions and the meeting confirmed my belief that he would be of little use in solving the Cyprus headache.
Still I tried hard to force him to face the reality of Greece's predicament. Cyprus had become a major threat to the peace of the world, and Greece had considerable responsibility for what had happened. Too much time had already been wasted. Now the matter must be settled definitively. I told Papandreou that I had talked not only with the British but with General de Gaulle, had taken soundings of the opinion of most of the NATO countries, and had found everywhere "a common anxiety to see the problem resolved rapidly." I then told Papandreou of the letter President Johnson had sent to Inonu, of which Papandreou had not heard. I left little room for nuances. This time disaster had been avoided only by the President's forceful intervention and his adamant insistence that there be no war between NATO allies. But, if Greece did not show greater cooperation, we would not take such a hard line again.
Papandreou seemed old, tired, and incapable of facing reality. The time, he maintained, was not propitious for a Cyprus settlement. That, I said, was completely wrong. Greece, he maintained, needed a Cyprus solution based on enosis. That, I replied, was total fantasy; Turkey would never accept it and Turkey was not only larger and militarily stronger than Greece but had a major logistical advantage in any conflict over Cyprus. Papandreou then contended that the "turbulence" over Cyprus resulted only from Turkey's invasion threats. I told him that, though I had heard all that before, it simply was not true. He was, I felt sure, too well acquainted with philosophy to believe such a simplistic explanation of a complex problem of causality. He knew better than to think that in attacking the Turkish minority, the Greek Cypriotes were merely responding to a fear of external intervention.
When I pressed him to undertake talks with Inonu, he shied away. Against all the evidence, he still seemed to assume that Greece could pursue its goal of enosis without danger of the Turks invading Cyprus, since he apparently took it for granted that the United States would always stand ready to thwart the Turks. Though I tried to convince him that that was dangerous nonsense, he seemed too feeble to grasp a fresh idea.
Before leaving, I asked Papandreou to visit President Johnson and he accepted, but we did not discuss dates. Although I was disappointed by his obtuseness, I did find his attitude toward Makarios more realistic. The Archbishop had, I gathered, alarmed responsible Greek opinion by his "flirtations with Moscow and Khrushchev." He had, Papandreou suggested, been a nuisance during the Cyprus crisis, and he implied that the Archbishop might be excluded from any negotiations aimed at settling it, which, of course, was exactly what I had in mind. Moreover, Papandreou acknowledged that other nations besides Greece and Turkey had an interest in peaceful settlement; the "major powers," he said, "must take a hand."
Meeting with Inonu
I left Athens late that night and arrived in Ankara about two in the morning. Before going to bed, I was briefed by our ambassador, Raymond Hare. An astute and experienced professional diplomat, he reported a conversation with a high Turkish official who had said, "We understand why it may have been necessary to administer a bitter pill, but we cannot understand why it had to have a bitter coating as well."
I was to meet with Foreign Minister Feridun Cemal Erkin at 9:oo A.M.; I was not looking forward to the appointment.
I liked the foreign minister; he was an experienced diplomat who could see the problem in its larger global context, but it was his job to express the views of his government and of the Turkish people at the sudden freshet of ice water we had dumped on them. I did my best but reserved my most effective arguments for Prime Minister Inonu.
Inonu received me correct but was far more reserved than when we had met previously. He was deeply troubled and personally hurt by the scolding he had received from the President. I reassured him regarding the warmth of America's friendship for Turkey and our desire to cooperate closely with the Turks in resolving a festering quarrel that could result in a major war. America, I told him, was not partial to the Greek side; indeed, we recognized that the Greek Cypriote majority had largely created the problem by terrorizing the Turkish Cypriotes. I made clear that we totally mistrusted Makarios. I then described in detail my talk with Papandreou and my disappointment that I had not persuaded him to stop calling for enosis, emphasizing the significance of what I took to be Papandreou's own increasing disenchantment with Makarios and his indication that Makarios need not be included in any negotiations. The Greek government, at long last, I said, is beginning to recognize that Makarios is an enemy of its longer-range interests.
Prime Minister Inonu replied in measured tones; my visit, I thought, had somewhat mollified him, and he seemed particularly interested in what I had just told him. America's attempt to promote a settlement based on strong principles was, he agreed, an encouraging development, but experience had shown that principles are sometimes abandoned when the time comes to translate them into concrete measures. He did, however, concede that, if I were correct in my appraisal of Papandreou's changed attitude towards Makarios, that was one of "the first rays of light in the dark situation."
After the meeting, Inonu took me aside to say that President Johnson's letter had, as he saw it, included "all the juridical thunderbolts that could be assembled. As a result, of course, he committed some errors and said some unjust things. Our foreign office will have to answer the thunderbolts." I interpreted this as reflecting Inonu's desire to warn us not to take their counter-reaction so seriously as to prejudice longer-term relations. We had unquestionably said harsh things to the Turkish government; as a matter of self-respect, they would have to say harsh things back. But we should not let that interfere with the friendship essential to both of us.
I was airborne again at 12:30, and I asked the pilot to take us non- stop to Washington, where we arrived at 5:30 that afternoon. During the entire thirteen hours, I dictated steadily to two secretaries and, by the time I arrived in Washington. I had a memorandum ready for the
President that not only gave a full report of my trip but recommended dial he immediately invite first Inonu and then Papandreou to Washington. Our only hope of a settlement now lay in bringing those two leaders together, so that they could reach an understanding that did not involve Makarios. If the President worked each of them over separately, we might he able to bring that about.
I was met at Andrews Field and taken directly to the President. It was June 11, 1964, when I returned to Washington. Within a few hours, we had invited Prime Minister Inonu to visit on June 22 and Prime Minister Papandreou, on June 24.
Visits of Two Prime Ministers
The two visits took place on schedule. As I expected, the President greatly liked Prime Minister Inonu, with whom he could talk straight-forwardly. If the Greek leader had shown anything like the same understanding, serious progress could have been made. But, as I had feared, the Papandreou visit came to little. Though we took the Greek Prime Minister to Mount Vernon on the President's launch, the Sequoia, and the President, Dean Acheson, and I all pushed him hard, he remained unresponsive. We were dealing with two old men. Though Inonu was at the time eighty-one years old and Papandreou seventy-seven, Inonu, with his brilliant past, seemed far the younger. Papandreou gave the appearance of flaccidity: a tired, slightly befuddled old man who could only repeat the banal slogans he had inherited when he took office and who seemed incapable of comprehending the larger issues.
The joint communique President Johnson and Prime Minister Inonu issued on June 23 had stated that the discussions proceeded from "the present binding effects of existing treaties." Now Papandreou, in a press conference, contradicted that assertion. The 1959 London-Zurich Accords were, he said no longer valid. Greece supported independence for Cyprus and its right to self-determination. It would not negotiate directly with the Turkish government because "no one is more competent to do that than the United Nations mediator."
Acheson Tries his Hand
Although Dean Acheson had for some time been helping me review all possible settlement plans, the time had now come to bring him directly into the negotiations so we could have a strong, forceful, and resourceful representative concentrating on the problem. I, therefore, suggested to Secretary-General U Thant of the United Nations on June 26 that the Greek and Turkish representatives be asked to meet with Acheson, who, I said, was almost a legendary figure in Greece and Turkey. As I feared, U Thant resisted the proposal on jurisdictional grounds,
since it implied that the United States might be taking the diplomatic initiative away from the United Nations. If we were to have such a meeting, it should certainly not be in America. Why not Geneva? Though I expressed reluctance, I had already thought of Geneva as a fall-back.
But his next stipulation was not so easy to accept. It would be necessary, he insisted, that UN Mediator Tuomioja, rather than Acheson, ask the Greek and Turkish representatives to meet with him at Geneva. When I protested that nothing could be accomplished without the presence of American authority represented by Acheson, he conceded that Acheson could establish himself near the site of the negotiations to be consulted to the extent that any of the participants wished. Though I protested that that was not a practical arrangement, U Thant showed the kind of Burmese stubbornness I had seen on other occasions. He feared a possible Soviet charge that the United States had taken over the negotiations and did not wish to give Makarios a basis for insisting that his government be represented at the Geneva talks.
I reported to the President that we would probably have to make do with this awkward improvisation; otherwise, the Secretary-General would refuse UN sponsorship, and the Greeks would never participate. Even in the wings, Acheson was such a strong personality that he could make his views felt.
I then met with Prime Minister Inonu, who was at the moment at the United Nations. As expected, he readily agreed to having the Turkish and Greek delegates meet with Acheson in Geneva but would not commit his government to refrain from a military solution if the talks should fail. Papandreou balked as usual. He would not agree to an American representative at the Geneva meeting. As a compromise, it was agreed that Acheson should go to Geneva and set himself up "in the next room or the next building" so as to be available for consultation. Papandreou reluctantly agreed to that formula.
At my urging, President Johnson sent further letters to Papandreou and Inonu, appealing to them to try to find a solution through negotiations. Papandreou responded with a childish tirade against the United States, asserting that Johnson's letter was an "ultimatum" of the same kind Greece had received from the Nazis in 1940. Since we espoused the principle of self-determination, why not support that principle on Cyprus? It was the tantrum of an excited old man out of his depth. Though he answered with harsh, almost hysterical, words, he ended by agreeing to send a delegate to Geneva.
Dean and Alice Acheson moved to Geneva. Before leaving, Dean and I canvassed every possible solution for the Cyprus problem: proposals for partition and resettlement, federal, confederal schemes and cantonal schemes, and even what we came to call "double enosis." Under this last arrangement, Greek Cypriotes would all be resettled in one part of the island and Turkish Cypriotes in another, while each sector would come under the sovereignty of its respective metropolitan power. During Acheson's stay in Geneva, he evolved one proposal that came to be known as the Acheson Plan. It took account of the successful population transfers that had been carried out after the Greek-Turkish resettlements in the early 1920s. It called for the union of Cyprus with Greece, cession of the Greek Dodecanese island of Kastellorizon to Turkey, resettlement and compensation of the Turkish Cypriotes wishing to emigrate, the creation of two enclaves on Cyprus for Turkish Cypriotes who wished to remain, and the establishment of a Turkish military base on Cyprus. Neither side, however, accepted the scheme.
Meanwhile, our intelligence had reported the growing antipathy between Makarios and General George Grivas, the famous leader of EOKA.. Though Grivas was, of course, a passionate advocate of enosis, he might, I thought, be easier to work with than Makarios, so we established an underground contact with Socrates Iliades, who was Grivas's lieutenant and director of the defense of Cyprus. Meanwhile, Grivas returned to Cyprus with a plan for enosis that provided protection for the Turkish Cypriotes remaining on the island and compensation for those wishing to leave. The fact that the Grivas Plan also called for the ouster of Makarios enhanced its attractiveness.
These schemes were all upset when Makarios encouraged the Greek Cypriotes to attack Turkish Cypriote villages. In retaliation, on August 7, four Turkish air force jets strafed the Cypriote town of Polis. The next day, thirty Turkish jets flew low over Greek Cypriote towns on the island's north coast. Finally, on August 9, Turkey sent sixty-four jets on another strafing and bombing foray against northwest Cyprus. The war was rapidly escalating.
In Washington, we set up a twenty-four-hour Cyprus command post, and I spent the following three nights sleeping in my office. Secretary Rusk would arrive early each morning and, in deference to his Georgian palate, we would have hominy grits for breakfast.
On Sunday, August 12, I instructed our ambassador in Athens, Henry Labouisse, to urge Papandreou to stop Makarios from further assaults on Turkish Cypriotes. We should press Papandreou to abandon "horse-trading or equivocation or passionate oratory" and act incisively to restore peace, making clear to him that Makarios was calling for military intervention by the Soviet Union and that it was "utterly essential" to keep the Russians, Egyptians, and other foreign troops out of Cyprus. At the same time, we warned Makarios that he would be publicly branded as a murderer if his units continued to harass the Cypriote Turks. Even Moscow had apparently been shaken by the course events were following, for on that same Sunday, August 12, Khrushchev sent word to Makarios that, while he sympathized with the Cyprus government, a cease-fire would be an "important contribution." With the Soviets offering him no assistance, Makarios grumpily accepted a UN call for a cease-fire, with Turkey following suit.
Our political talks were making little progress, and on August 18, Acheson telexed me that, in his view, the chances of obtaining a quick Greek-Turkish settlement on Cyprus were "about the same as the odds on Goldwater." We should, he advised, liquidate our efforts and let him come home, though he would continue to keep in touch with Greece and Turkey to prevent Cyprus from being transformed "into a Russian Mediterranean satellite."
I urged Acheson to stay on. To "liquidate" the Geneva operations would please Makarios and make him even more intransigent. If His Beatitude ever decided that the United States had grown indifferent, he would recklessly attack the Turkish Cypriotes, and the Turks would be forced to intervene. I pointed out to Acheson that his negotiating efforts had already yielded some useful results. They had persuaded Papandreou to negotiate with Turkey and to accept a Turkish base on Cyprus; they had even got General Grivas to consider such a base. At the same time, they had eased some of Turkey's initial demands.
Since there was a six-hour difference between the United States and Geneva, I followed the practice with Acheson of talking to him around 2:00 A.M. Washington time on a scrambled teletype in the operations center at the State Department, while he sat at the other end in the consulate in Geneva. That night, after a long session of arguing over the teletype, I ended my peroration to Acheson with "Aux armes, citoyens." If the Geneva enterprise must die, I contended, its burial should be conducted not "by an orthodox Archbishop but by the son of an Episcopal bishop," which, of course, meant Acheson. Acheson had tried with great skill and exceptional patience to settle a problem created by the wicked and the weak. A man of rare quality, I admired him enormously, and one of my most cherished possessions is a handwritten note commenting on something I had written. Sent two weeks before his death, it concluded with the cheering admonition: "Keep on making sense; you have the field to yourself."
End of the Crisis
In the end, the crisis momentarily subsided. Pressed by America and the United Nations and denied aid by the Soviets, Makarios's position was weakened, particularly with General Grivas challenging his hold over the island. A UN force was in place, and. for the time being, a precarious peace was maintained. That, of course, was not the end of the Cyprus story . . .
During my years in the State Department, Secretary Rusk and I worked on a completely alter ego basis' which meant that, when Rusk was away, he did not, as he made clear, "take the keys of his office with him." As Acting Secretary of State, I was in a position, when necessary, to move incisively, with the President's approval; Rusk established the same ground rules with my successor, Nicholas Katzenbach.
The importance of such an arrangement was disclosed in July 1974Cten years after the crisis I have just described. This time, unhappily, the United States failed to respond. Trying to run the State Department singlehandedly from an airplane. Secretary Kissinger knew nothing about Cyprus and did not bother to inform himself. As a result, he absent- mindedly let the Greek junta mount a coup in Cyprus that incited a Turkish invasion. When the Turks swarmed across the island, the Nixon AdministrationCunder pressure from the Greek lobbyCstopped arms shipments to Turkey and alienated the eastern anchor of our southern flank defense. As of this writing, 36 percent of Cyprus, including the most attractive tourist areas, remains under occupation by the Turkish army. Greece and Turkey are at sword's point and both are on uneasy terms with the United States and NATO. Makarios is dead, and the partition that might have solved Cyprus's problems has now been achieved by force and in a manner tragically unfair to the Greek Cypriotes.
The moral is clear: effective diplomacy for a great nation requires a constant high-quality institutional vigilance. That is not possible when all decisions are preempted by an individual virtuoso with a lust for travel.
About George Ball=s diplomacy, the British journalist Christopher Hitchens writes:
At every stage of the drama...the weakness and errors of Cypriots were exploited and compounded by external intervention.....Perhaps most of all it was true when the United states government, in the words of George Ball, >established an underground contact= with the terrorists of George Grivas, and did so in the name of protecting the Turks! In that incident, both ends were played against the middle and the manipulation of internal tensions was dovetailed with a great power calculation designed to abolish the nation=s independence. From that incident, also, stems the foreign involvement with Greek-sponsored subversion in Cyprus, which led to the coup and to the Turkish invasion.
- from Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger (1997 edition), page 159.
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