Παναγιώτης Ήφαιστος

Καθηγητής, Διεθνείς Σχέσεις-Στρατηγικές Σπουδές

Πανεπιστήμιο Πειραιώς, Τμήμα Διεθνών και Ευρωπαϊκών Σπουδών

www.ifestos.edu.gr  -- www.ifestosedu.gr  --  info@ifestosedu.gr  -- info@ifestos.edu.gr

 

Για μετάβαση στην κεντρική σελίδα, άνοιγμα σε άλλο παράθυρο, κλικ εδώ www.ifestos.edu.gr  ή www.ifestosedu.gr

Αναδημοσιεύσεις βιβλιοκριτικών

Περιεχόμενα (κλικ για μετάβαση)

1. Philippos Stylianou, Hannay’s misleading diplomacy, Cyprus Weekly

2. Μάρτιν Πάκαρντ, Χάνεϊ, ο λάθος άνθρωπος στην αναζήτηση λύσεων

3. Cyprus Betrayed, Another fine mess, courtesy of Kofi Annan's U.N.
by Christopher Hitchens.

4. An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretar-General’s Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004. By Claire Palley Συνέντευξη

5. Marios L. Evriviades on Claire Palley' s book

6. Book Review, Palley's An international Relations debacle, Nicholas G. Karambelas Published in

7. Μάριος Ευριβιάδης: Ηλιάδης και Packard: Δύο βιβλία για την Κύπρο και την κρίσιμη περίοδο 1959- 1964

8. David Hannay: Cyprus: The Search for a Solution. London: I. B. Tauris,2005 by Martin Packard.

 

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Reviews

David Hannay: Cyprus: The Search for a Solution. London: I. B. Tauris,

2005. 256 pages. ISBN 1-850436-65-7. $46.00. Reviewed by Martin

Packard.

Lord David Hannay has written a very readable book. Sadly, though, it offers nothing

of real value to the Cyprus debate. Starting from a fl awed concept of Cypriot history, it

proceeds entertainingly to a set of fl awed conclusions. That the middle, diary sections

have a patina of whole-hearted objectivity does not detract from the subjectivity of the

work as a whole. It will damage the Cypriot cause, and maybe help that of London,

by diverting international attention from the reality of the problems that have been

imposed on Cyprus. It also will strengthen a Cypriot view that Whitehall should cease

to represent itself as a competent interpreter of Cypriot affairs.

Lord Hannay was the wrong man to be involved in a search for solutions in Cyprus:

too clever, too arrogant in his own views, too much a product of the Whitehall establishment.

He came with a reputation as a successful operator at the United Nations, as a

broker of compromises rather than as an advocate of justice. In Cyprus, as was to be

expected, he worked for a compromise between external interests and Cypriot rights.

What Cyprus needed was a facilitator with a genuine commitment to an ethical solution—

it needed a man who was answerable to the Cypriot people rather than to any

outside power; it needed someone with emotional sympathy rather than intellectualism;

it needed a lateral thinker rather than a practitioner of realpolitik.

Lord Hannay is an advocate of a “virgin birth” for Cyprus. He considers that Cypriot

history should start from about 1990, and that thirty years of Turkish occupation and

more than double that of British complicity in dividing Cyprus should be accepted as

done deeds, rather than as separate issues that need to be addressed before any real

process of intercommunal solution can begin.

Inherent in this book is the double standard between international pressure for Syr-

Martin Packard MBE is retired lieutenant commander of the Royal Navy and former intelligence

advisor to the commander-in-chief, Mediterranean Comedsoueast.

Reviews 141

ian withdrawal from Lebanon and international toleration of the continued Turkish

military and intelligence presence in Cyprus. The UN and the United States have been

strong in their advocacy of decolonization: is it diffi cult for them to understand that

Britain and Turkey have effectively imposed a form of neocolonialism on Cyprus?

The constitution that was pushed onto Cyprus in 1960 was the most circumscribed

and least democratic outcome of any independence process in modern history. It was

based on ethnic division; it conferred on foreign powers the right to meddle in Cypriot

affairs in pursuit of their own interests; it wholly failed to lay the foundations for an

organic welding of the Cypriot people into a dynamic and viable partnership. In exactly

similar fashion the architects of the Annan Plan have produced proposals that would

require the Cypriots to accept arrangements that are in profound derogation of the

norms both of the UN and of the European Union and that do nothing to encourage the

island’s inhabitants toward a genuine partnership.

The reason for these derogations had little to do with intercommunal problems.

The massive demonstration of intercommunal compatibility at the popular level since

the 2003 opening of the Green Line has laid to rest the myth, long cultivated by selfinterested

outsiders, that reengagement would be characterized by acrimony and

violence. The nub of the diffi culty in producing a proposal for Cyprus acceptable to

London and Washington lies rather with the strategic interests that Britain and Turkey

consider themselves to have in the island and with attempts by Washington and London

to keep the Turkish army onsite.

Lord Hannay’s failure to address the realities of the Turkish military’s current occupation

of a large section of Cyprus gives an Alice-in-Wonderland dimension to the

whole of his book. He, like other British commentators, suggests that the Greek Cypriots

should trust the goodwill of the Turkish army. Given that army’s long-standing claim

that it needs to be able to exercise an effective control over the whole of Cyprus, this

suggestion would seem to be either duplicitous or disingenuous, or both.

In a quite appalling article in 2004, headlined “Greek Cypriots Must Pay the Price

of Folly,” Hannay laid blame on the Greek Cypriots and their president. There was not

one word of humility or suggestion that those who concocted the fi nal terms of the fi fth

version of the Annan Plan might have failed in their task to deliver an equitable proposal

or that the Greek-Cypriot vote in fact suggested an electorate with considerable

intelligence. If the views in that article tally with those of the British government, as I

suspect, it is easy to understand why relations between Nicosia and London are now at

an all-time low.

It is a major problem for Cyprus that Britain has acquired acceptance by much of

the EU, the UN, and the United States as a valid spokesman on Cypriot affairs. People

of substance listen when Hannay or Whitehall lay out their views, whereas Cypriot

attempts at explanation or rebuttal are disregarded. Key politicians and media commentators

normally noted for their objectivity refuse to listen to criticism of Annan 5,

142 Mediterranean Quarterly: Fall 2005

claiming that it was the Greek Cypriots’ last, best chance, or to countenance that its

rejection was an example of the democracy that they are so vigorously championing

elsewhere.

Britain, which has consistently pursued its objectives in Cyprus through formulas

that are ethnically divisive, even when alternate routes were available, ought now to be

seen as so profoundly self-interested as to have disqualifi ed itself from further involvement

in any process of disinterested solution seeking. Furthermore, Britain is the most

fervent supporter of Turkey’s accession to the EU. In that role it is keen to convince

other EU states that the Turkish occupation of northern areas of Cyprus, totally illegal

in international law and contrary to UN resolutions, should now be overlooked. Hannay

and his book, in contributing to this public relations process, proffer a holier-than-thou

attitude that will stick in the gullet of those with a genuine understanding of, and sympathy

for, the Cypriot people.

This book can be recommended for its excellent use of the English language, and

for a beguiling view of a top-down foreign effort at nation-building and for easy bedtime

reading. It should not, however, be seen as an aid to the understanding of the problems

of Cyprus, or as an effort to further convergence or reconciliation.

Alexander Kitroeff: Wrestling with the Ancients: Modern Greek Identity

and the Olympics. New York: Greekworks, 2004. 276 pages. ISBN

0-974660-0-3. $32.00. Reviewed by Constantine P. Danopoulos.

Since their founding in the 1890s by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the modern Olympic

Games have received a fair amount of media and scholarly attention. Sociologists,

historians, and other sports enthusiasts have produced numerous works detailing and

analyzing the nature and importance of the ancient games, their evolution, the political

calculations surrounding post-1896 Olympiads, the effects of commercialization in the

staging of the games, the impact of performance-enhancement substances, and a host

of other issues. Spurred by pride in the fact that the Olympics began in ancient Greece,

contemporary Greek historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists generated a good

number of studies chronicling the nature and the evolution of the games, and used them

to praise the achievements of their ancient ancestors. Others wrote narratives describing

the fi rst two modern Olympiads (1896 and 1906), both held in Athens.

Despite their scholastic value, however, none of these works delves into the Olympic

Games’ contribution to the evolution of the modern Greek state, with respect to state-

Constantine P. Danopoulos is professor of political science at San Jose State University.

Reviews 143

building and national-identity formation. Alexander Kitroeff’s sharp eye spotted the

void and labored to fi ll the missing link. Wrestling with the Ancients is an outstanding

piece of scholarship that is destined to become the standard work in the fi eld. The

editors and staff of Greekworks deserve credit for recognizing the timeliness and high

quality of Kitroeff’s work, as well as for working tenaciously to put out a text that is

eminently readable yet retains admirable scholarly value.

Kitroeff’s central thesis is that the revival of the Olympic Games afforded Greece an

opportunity to confront the issues of national identity and the nation’s connection and

relations with the outside world. In his words, Greece “experienced its dual identity, as

the heir to classical traditions and as a modernized, European state, through its role in

the international Olympic movement.” Athens viewed the games both “as an affi rmation

of its ancient heritage and as a means through which to gain international recognition.”

The parallel and largely successful pursuits of these dual-identity goals is responsible

for the “privileged place [Greece] managed to maintain in the international Olympic

movement.”

While the convergence of ancient heritage and international recognition served

Greece’s interests, the nexus failed to satisfy the goals of de Coubertin and the International

Olympic Committee (IOC). Spurred by the conviction that the Olympics would be

a means to venerate the accomplishments of their glorious ancestors, successive Greek

governments saw the Olympics “as a celebration of ancient traditions colored by sport”

and, despite the country’s poor economic conditions, inaugurated a relentless campaign

to make Greece the permanent site of the Games. A philhellene and ardent admirer of

the classics, de Coubertin, along with the IOC, viewed the equation in reverse. For them

the “Olympics were conceived as a celebration of sport colored by ancient traditions.”

Greece’s aim to use the glory of the past to foster national identity and strengthen the

country’s international reputation ran contrary to de Coubertin’s concept of an Olympic

movement as an international athletic event imbued by ancient Hellenic values. As a

result, de Coubertin and his successors opposed the idea of making Greece the permanent

site for the games.

With the passage of time, the two sides drew different conclusions regarding the

importance of Greece to the Olympic movement. As Kitroeff argues, “still under

the grip of de Coubertin, [the IOC] remained attached to the earlier romantic views

of Greece,” and doubted the ability of the destitute modern Greek state to stage the

enlarged and increasingly more complex games. Yet in recognition of the “spirit of the

place,” the committee decided to have Greece march “fi rst in the opening parade of

nations”—a tradition consolidated during the 1932 Los Angeles Olympiad and maintained

ever since.

At the same time, the holding of the fi rst few Olympiads in Athens served to

embolden Greek beliefs that they (modern Greeks) were “the rightful heirs to the classical

tradition.” This frame of thinking led Greek offi cials to make two ill-founded and

144 Mediterranean Quarterly: Fall 2005

damaging assumptions. The fi rst related to Greece’s role in the 1936 Berlin games. Nazi

propaganda venerated the ancient Greek civilization and coaxed the Hellenic Olympic

Committee to become “a willing participant in the German-Nazi appropriation of

ancient Greece in the context of the 1936 games,” arguably the “most controversial of

the twentieth century.” For in Kitroeff’s words, “The so-called Nazi Olympics involved

not only a brazen attempt to celebrate Aryan superiority but also [paid] homage to the

Olympic movement’s classical heritage.”

In addition, the view that the modern Greeks were the rightful heirs of the classics

led Greek Olympic and government offi cials to believe that the IOC would automatically

award the Centennial Olympiad (1996) to its birthplace. Citing concerns “over the economic

and organizational viability of the games and impressed by corporate infl uence,”

the IOC rejected Athens’ inadequately prepared bid and chose Atlanta instead. Much

to the Greeks’ surprise and consternation, respect for heritage and tradition could not

compete with effi ciency, imagination, and professionalism. Melina Mercouri expressed

Greek unhappiness when she stated that Coca-Cola had defeated the Parthenon. As

Kitroeff eloquently states, “The IOC reject[ed] history and tradition, and embrace[d]

the high-tech image of a New World Olympiad.”

Though defeated and unhappy, unabashed Greek offi cials learned valuable lessons,

which they applied successfully in their effort to host the 2004 Olympiad. They took

note that the 1996 bid was doomed because the “attempt had been defi cient, complacent,

and unable to address obvious weaknesses, such as security, smog, and transport.”

Under the new, modernizing, technocratic, and agenda-oriented government of Kostas

Semitis, Athens “launched [the 2004] bid by stressing its ability to organize the games

effi ciently while keeping the allusions to history and tradition in the background.” By

placing Gianna Angelopoulou-Daskalake at the helm of the bid committee, the socialist

prime minister chose “an able person who was a member of the opposition.” Semitis

sent a clear and reassuring message to the IOC: “[He] favored capable hands, irrespective

of political outlook.” The IOC was convinced that Athens had the wherewithal to

stage the twenty-eighth Olympiad and gave the city the nod. Athens prevailed “because

it was able to reassure the committee that its infrastructure and organizational ability

could support the games.”

But the victory almost turned pyrrhic, as infrastructure building and other preparation

was delayed by bureaucratic squabbles, lack of organization, and sloppy management.

By early 2000, members of the IOC were sounding warning bells. IOC president

Juan Antonio Samaranch “delivered an unprecedented public rebuke.” In a 20 October

meeting with Greek offi cials, “he said that the games were in the worst organizational

crisis faced by an Olympic city in his twenty-year tenure.” Other IOC offi cials suggested

that Athens “was running out of time” and dropped hints that the games might

be moved to another site. The newly reelected Semitis government heeded IOC warnings

and took measures to speed up preparations. The return of Angelopoulou-Dakalaks

Reviews 145

at the helm, a more active role by Semitis, and greater coordination by the relevant

ministers suffi ced to regain the lost ground. Although Kitroeff’s book went to press

before the summer 2004 games were held, the world witnessed a very successful

Olympiad.

The Athens games proved that tradition and modernity can be molded into a single

successful formula. This combination has served the Olympic movement well, enabling

the games to survive the vagaries of Nazism, World War II, and the Cold War. Tradition,

Kitroeff claims, has enabled the IOC to cloak the movement with an “ideological

legitimacy provided by ancient traditions, [of which] Greece remains an important

part.” While the Olympic movement has been able to strike a relatively successful balance

between tradition and modernity, the 2004 games “challenge[d] Greece to fi nd

the right equilibrium between past and present.” Kitroeff concludes that contemporary

Greece’s “contribution to the Olympic movement is a given, because the games are

part of the heritage of the classical past, and thus one way or another, a core element of

Greek identity.” The phenomenal success of the Athens Olympiad is living proof that

moderns are capable of blending tradition and modernity.

Brendan O’Leary, John McGarry, and Khaled Salih, eds., The Future of

Kurdistan in Iraq, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. 307 pages. ISBN

0-8122-3870-2. $45.00. Reviewed by Robert Olson.

When more than one hundred London-based diplomats, politicians, journalists, and

international affairs analysts turn out for a discussion of a book, one knows that the

book is timely and has something to say about pressing current international affairs and

about its topic’s potential for impacting regional and international geopolitical alignments.

This is what happened on 31 May 2005 at Chatham House, a British think tank

associated closely with the United Kingdom’s Foreign Ministry. The book discussed

was The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq, edited by Brendan O’Leary, John McGarry, and

Khaled Salih. O’Leary is a noted international authority on various types of governmental

arrangements, such as federations, confederations, and plurifederations. McGarry is

a Canadian academic who specializes in the same topics, and Salih is a Kurdish scholar

who teaches at the University of Southern Denmark at Odense. Both O’Leary and Salih

spent several months in early 2004 in Kurdistan, Iraq, as advisers to the Kurdistan

Regional Government (KRG) participating in the drafting of the Transitional Administrative

Law (TAL), which has been the government instrument of Iraq, although not

fully implemented, since it went into effect on 8 March 2004. The TAL was scheduled

Robert Olson is professor of Middle East politics and history at the University of Kentucky.

146 Mediterranean Quarterly: Fall 2005

to be replaced by an Iraq-wide assembly, elected no later than 31 January 2005, obviously

a date that was not met.

The task at hand for O’Leary et al. is to “right-size” Iraq, that is, to make the state of

Iraq more compatible to the various ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups, resulting in

better management of the state, reduced hostility, and lessened armed confl ict and violence

and to secure a more stable political and geopolitical entity. All three co-authors

and their major contributors, such as Peter Galbraith and Gareth Stansfi eld, apply their

wide experience with multinational and plurinational states to the evolving question of

the future of Iraq and, in particular in this study, Kurdistan in Iraq.

The title notably emphasizes the future of Kurdistan in Iraq and not Kurdistan Iraq

or Kurdistan-Iraq, which indicates the preference of the contributors and especially,

O’Leary, since he wrote or co-authored four of the main chapters dealing with plurifederation.

The title implies that, at least for the time being, the contributors think that

a “unifi ed” Iraq would best serve the interests of the peoples of Iraq, especially the

Kurds, and implicitly the geopolitical and geostrategic interests of the United States

and Europe as well as Middle East states, with the exception of Iran. If, in the future,

Iran were to fragment and the success of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq were

to be one of the factors contributing to that fragmentation, such a development would

probably be acceptable to the contributors of this volume. But, if this were to be the

case, then the plurifederalism advocated would be jeopardized.

The principal theoretical projection of the book is in chapters 2 and 4, written or coauthored

by O’Leary. As mentioned above, O’Leary was and is an adviser to the KRG

and participated in the drafting of the TAL. Why advocate a plurinational federation

for Iraq instead of a multinational federation? Because, says O’Leary, “A ‘plurinational’

federation describes a state in which there are multiple and recognized nations, whose

respective nationals may be both concentrated and dispersed, and in which individuals

may identify with one, more than one, or none of these nations.” The prefi x pluri helpfully

describes cases of “not one”; that is, it covers both two and more and suggests that

national identity or identities may be variable in intensity and that the federation may

comprise both confl icting and compatible identities. Multinational federation, by contrast,

is often interpreted as indicating spatially discrete and homogeneously adjacent

nations, as requiring three or more nations, as suggesting that each national identity is

held exclusively and that each national has only one national identity possessed with

the same intensity. The TAL foreshadows a plurinational federation.

Kurdistan in Iraq, stipulates O’Leary, also must be a consensual federation that has

inclusive executive power-sharing and representative arrangements in the federal

government, institutionalizes proportional principles of representation and

allocation of powers, bills of rights, monetary institutions and courts, which are

insulated from the immediate power of a federal governing majority. A consensual

Reviews 147

federation differs from a majoritarian federation, which concentrates power at the

federal level and facilitates executive and legislative dominance either through a

popularly endorsed executive president or through a single-party prime minister

and cabinet which has the confi dence of the federal house of representatives.

O’Leary believes a consensual federation for Iraq would provide the best protection

for minorities, such as Turkomans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans (Keldanis) as well

as Kurds. He does not state, however, whether he would also advocate a consensual

federation for an independent Kurdish state were one to be realized. In short, O’Leary’s

chapters, like McGarry’s (the latter bases his analysis of Iraq on the Canadian experience

of federation), seek to maximize the protection of the Kurds from any future potential

nationalist or military challenge from Arabs—Iraqi Arabs or otherwise but, within

Iraq, especially from the Shia. Notably, however, McGarry stresses that in Canada

the decentralized federation experiment embedded in the Westminister (majoritarian)

model of government “has been based as much on a spirit of elite accommodation as on

facilitative institutional rules”—an elite accommodation, McGarry could have added,

facilitated by substantial availability of capital and the potential to accrue more capital.

This is a topic not addressed throughout the book. This, in turn, raises a question that

is addressed, namely, that the violence and armed confl ict in Iraq may prohibit the

kind of elite accommodation enabling plurinational federation to adequately function.

Moreover, Canada’s multimajoritarian federalism is a much less complicated system by

which to rule than the plurinational federation advocated by O’Leary for Iraq.

Gareth Stansfi eld, in his contribution, is not as sanguine that the Kurdistan Democratic

Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), because of traditional

and strong rivalry, will be able to meet the requisites of plurinational federalism. He

recommends that the KDP and PUK should concentrate on resolving the existing division

between them. But O’Leary, possibly more in tune with the geopolitical objectives

of the United States and Europe, argues that several features of the TAL, such as the

number of governates (muhafaza), elections, and prospective party law, would compel

the leadership of the KDP and PUK to be more cooperative. In this regard, O’Leary,

writing in early 2004, seems to have been on target in his analysis in that the KDP and

PUK announced in June 2005 that the KDP- and PUK-administered territories would

come sometime soon under the authority (prime ministership?) of Masud Barzani, the

leader of the KDP; his PUK rival, Jalal Talabani, at this time is president of Iraq.

The crux of The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq is clearly based on the TAL crafted

and drafted by scores of American, British, Arab, and Kurdish legal experts and by

scholars of federation systems such as O’Leary to provide the greatest possible protection

to the Kurds regardless of what happens in Iraq. But O’Leary, quoting Peter

Galbraith, states that “the US failed to protect the TAL for two main reasons: one, the

incompetence of the occupation authority’s legal advisers not to realize that Bremer’s

148 Mediterranean Quarterly: Fall 2005

decrees (and there were thousands of them) would not outlast the occupation; and, two,

the American (Pentagon?) preference to defer to majoritarian and anti-federal opinions

among Shia Arabs led by Ayatollah al Sistani, who consistently strongly opposed the

federal and ratifi cation proposals that the Kurds and their advisers sought to embed in

the TAL. Many of the plans to implement the TAL went awry as Galbraith and O’Leary,

in a postscript, make clear.

The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq has some ironies. On the one hand, we have scores

of American advisers to the Kurds who were instrumental in crafting and drafting the

TAL, whose main purpose was to guarantee to the greatest possible extent the protection

of the Kurds within a thinly disguised “unifi ed” Iraq state (leaving aside the viability

of such a state to endure). On the other hand, we have scores of Pentagon, intelligence,

and other American administration offi cials who felt compelled to declare publicly (we

don’t yet know what their privately stated goals were, although we can deduce that the

preservation of a unifi ed Iraq over a longer term was not one of them) that one of their

goals was to preserve a “unifi ed” Iraq. For a government like that of the United States

to announce, or even to leave the public impression, that the object of the war against

Iraq and the occupation of that country was to create a set of circumstances in which

Iraq would be fragmented into an Arab and Kurdish entity would be analogous to the

circumstances that led to the creation of Israel after the thirty-one-year (1917 to 1948)

British mandatory period.

A further criticism of The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq, with the exception of Michael

Gunter’s chapter on Turkey (which is also sparse), is the little attention paid to Iran

or Syria or other of Iraq’s neighbors such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait—all

largely Sunni countries, which are vital for a viable Iraq to endure whether the TAL, or

portions thereof, are implemented or not. As John McGarry emphasized in his contribution,

it is not laws, no matter how fi nely crafted, that determine the success of any type

of federation or, indeed, government; it is the “spirit of elite accommodation.” Given the

violence in Iraq among the elite, accommodation among them will be diffi cult.

Another weakness of the book is that it does not contextualize the objectives the

United States seeks to obtain via its Wider Middle East Initiative (WMEI), through

which democratization of Arab countries is to be implemented by the imposition of pro-

American governments with internationally driven capital development plans and economic

systems. One of the major goals of the WMEI is to expedite further the integration

of the Arab economies with that of international capital and Israel’s economy. Such

a development would ensure the security of Israel well into the future even as it persists

in expanding into the West Bank. This is one of the major reasons for the invasion and

occupation of Iraq and for the subsequent necessity of drafting the TAL.

The book also has two important appendices: Kurdistan’s Constitutional Proposal

and the TAL. The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq well deserves the prestigious turnout it

produced at Chatham House.

 

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Ο Φιλελεύθερος

Απόρρητα της ελληνικής ΚΥΠ για τα πρώτα βήματα της Κ. Δημοκρατίας

>Ηλιάδης και Packard: Δύο βιβλία για την Κύπρο και την κρίσιμη περίοδο 1959- 1964

TOY MAΡΙΟΥ ΕΥΡΥΒΙΑΔΗ

Δύο εξαιρετικά βιβλία για τη σύγχρονη ιστορία της Κύπρου κυκλοφορούν, κατά μία περίεργη συγκυρία, την περίοδο αυτή στην αγορά. Το ένα είναι του Μάνου Ηλιάδη, Το Απόρρητο Ημερολόγιο της ΚΥΠ στην Κύπρο (Εκδόσεις Σιδέρης) που καλύπτει τη δεκαεπτάμηνη περίοδο 13 Ιουνίου 1959 μέχρι και τις 28 Νοεμβρίου 1960. Το άλλο είναι του Martin Packard, Getting it Wrong: Fragments from a Cyprus Diary 1964 (2007). Το βιβλίο του Ηλιάδη βασίζεται σε 80 απόρρητες εκθέσεις της Eλληνικής Yπηρεσίας Πληροφοριών (ΚΥΠ) που δρούσε στην Κύπρο τότε και τα οποία δημοσιοποιούνται στο βιβλίο. Το πόνημα του Packard βασίζεται στην πολυσέλιδη αναφορά του προς τις Βρετανικές Υπηρεσίες, ως μέλος της αρχικά βρετανικής ειρηνευτικής δύναμης που αναπτύχθηκε στην Κύπρο στις αρχές του 1964 και η οποία μετεξελίχθηκε στη γνωστή μας ΟΥΝΦΙΚΥΠ. Και τα δύο βιβλία περιέχουν και βασίζονται σε πρωτογενές υλικό. Και στις δύο περιπτώσεις το πρωτογενές υλικό και οι εκτιμήσεις των συγγραφέων ανατρέπουν τη συμβατική σοφία και τις ιδεοληπτικές και επιδερμικές προσεγγίσεις για τα τεκταινόμενα στην Κύπρο την περίοδο1959-1964. Και στις δύο περιπτώσεις το πρωτογενές αυτό υλικό δεν θα έβλεπε ποτέ τη δημοσιότητα εάν οι συγγραφείς δεν έδειχναν ιδιαίτερο ζήλο, υπομονή, επιμονή, μόχθο αλλά και προσωπικό ρίσκο. Στην περίπτωση του Packard ο άνθρωπος έχασε την στρατιωτική του καριέρα, κυνηγήθηκε ανελέητα από το βρετανικό κράτος (και από τους Αμερικανούς) και καταστράφηκε οικονομικά. Ποιο το αμάρτημά του; Πίστεψε και απέδειξε με τη δράση του το 1964, ότι οι Ελληνοκύπριοι και Τουρκοκύπριοι μπορούν να διαβιώσουν ειρηνικά στην Κύπρο. Κάτι τέτοιο έρχονταν σε μετωπική σύγκρουση με την ήδη ειλημμένη απόφαση της Ουάσιγκτον και του Λονδίνου, με την οποία συμφωνούσαν Ελλάδα και Τουρκία ότι η, έστω και κολοβή, ανεξαρτησία που δόθηκε στην Κύπρο ήταν στρατηγικό λάθος και ότι το Κυπριακό Κράτος έπρεπε πάραυτα να καταλυθεί. Η απάντηση που εισέπραξε ο Packard, επιμένοντας στη συμφιλίωση ως στρατηγική επίλυσης του Κυπριακού, από έναν εκ των αρχιτεκτόνων των σχεδίων για την κατάλυση του Κυπριακού Κράτους, τον Αμερικανό Αναπληρωτή Υπουργού Εξωτερικών George Ball, ήταν ότι κατάλαβε λάθος την αποστολή του. Στόχος των Δυτικών Δυνάμεων που αναπτύχθηκαν στην Κύπρο το 1964 δεν ήταν, του δήλωσε κυνικά, η συμφιλίωση, αλλά η κατάλυση του κράτους και ο διαμελισμός του νησιού. Στην περίπτωση Ηλιάδη, το βιβλίο του είναι μοναδικό. Μέσα από τα πληροφοριακά δελτία , σημειώματα και εκθέσεις της ΚΥΠ, που είχαν ως τελικούς αποδέκτες τον Πρωθυπουργό και Υπουργό Εξωτερικών της Ελλάδας, ξεπροβάλλουν άγνωστες πτυχές της πολιτικής ιστορίας της Κύπρου. Η μοναδικότητα του βιβλίου προέρχεται και από το γεγονός ότι όλα όσα καταγράφονται είναι προσωποποιημένα. Αναφέρονται εκατοντάδες ονόματα Ελληνοκυπρίων και Τουρκοκυπρίων σε συσχετισμό με δραστηριότητες που θεωρούνταν αξιόλογες προς καταγραφή. Η δε ημερολογιακή δομή των δελτίων κυριολεκτικά αναβιώνει το «κλίμα της εποχής», τις δράσεις, τους ρόλους και τα κίνητρα των δρώντων μέσα και έξω από την Κύπρο. Μέσα από το σύνολο των Εκθέσεων υπάρχουν, βέβαια, και πολιτικές σκοπιμότητες τις οποίες ο κάθε νοήμων αναγνώστης μπορεί να αντιληφθεί και οι οποίες αναδεικνύονται από τον ίδιο τον συγγραφέα μέσα από το δικό του σχολιασμό. Μια από τις σκοπιμότητες αυτές, η πιο σημαντική κατά την εκτίμησή μου, ήταν και η εσκεμμένη υποβάθμιση, ή αλλιώς, η μη ανάπτυξη θεμάτων και γεγονότων υπό τη μορφή «σχολίων» και «εκτιμήσεων», που έρχονταν σε αντίθεση με το «πνεύμα της Ζυρίχης - Λονδίνου». Η πολιτική ηγεσία της Ελλάδας δεν ήθελε, προφανώς, να ακούσει, έστω και για δική της εσωτερική ενημέρωση, οτιδήποτε αμφισβητούσε το πνεύμα αυτό. Η πιο κραυγαλέα από τις σκοπιμότητες αυτές ήταν η «αγνόηση» της πραγματικά απίστευτης σε πληρότητα τεκμηρίωσης της ΚΥΠ, με λεπτομέρειες που μας αφήνουν άναυδους, της αχαλίνωτης και απρόσκοπτης δραστηριότητας του επίσημου τουρκικού κράτους, των υπηρεσιών του και των Τουρκοκυπρίων, για την εισαγωγή οπλισμού στην Κύπρο την περίοδο αυτή. Οι εισαγωγές δεν προήρχοντο μόνο από την Τουρκία αλλά και από τις διεθνείς αγορές όπως για παράδειγμα, αυτή του Λιβάνου. Το πασίγνωστο επεισόδιο της εισαγωγής όπλων από την Τουρκία με το πλοιάριο Ντενίζ, (νηολόγιο Σμύρνης) στις 18 Οκτωβρίου 1959 αποτελούσε, όπως προκύπτει από τα ντοκουμέντα, την κορυφή του παγόβουνου. Τη δεκαεπτάμηνη περίοδο των εκθέσεων της ΚΥΠ η εισαγωγή οπλισμού από την Τουρκία διαπιστώνεται ως σχεδόν «καθημερινό» φαινόμενο το οποίο λάμβανε χώρα και εν γνώσει των Βρετανών. Οι τελευταίοι σε ατομικό επίπεδο εκπαίδευαν τους Τουρκοκύπριους στα όπλα συνήθως τα βράδια και τους πούλησαν οπλισμό. Κατά τους υπολογισμούς της ΚΥΠ, προερχόμενους από αγγλικές πηγές, το Ντενίζ μετέφερε 5-8 τόνους πυρομαχικών. Ο συνολικός δε αριθμός των όπλων που οι Τούρκοι εισήγαγαν στην Κύπρο, πάντοτε κατά τους υπολογισμούς της ΚΥΠ, ήταν περίπου 10.000 τεμάχια. Η Έκθεση της ΚΥΠ της 21ης Οκτωβρίου 1960, λίγο δηλαδή μετά την ανακήρυξη της ανεξαρτησίας, είναι διαφωτιστικότατη: «Κατά το εξάμηνον διάστημα μεταξύ Ιανουαρίου 1959 - Ιουλίου 1959, λαθραίως εισήχθησαν υπό των Τουρκοκυπρίων 6000 όπλα, ήτοι βαρέα πολυβόλα, οπλοπολυβόλα, τυφέκια, πιστόλια και περίστροφα, ως και όλμοι των 2 και τριών ιντσών, ανελθόντος ούτω, κατά Ιούνιον 1959, του αριθμού των υπό της Τουρκικής Κοινότητος κατεχομένων όπλων εις 7.000, μετά μεγάλου αριθμού σφαιρών». «Μετά τον Ιούλιον του 1959 και μέχρι 2 Σεπτεμβρίου 1960 εσυνεχίσθη εις μεγάλην έκτασιν η λαθραία εισαγωγή όπλων και πυρομαχικών υπό των Τουρκοκυπρίων, ώστε σήμερον να πιστεύεται ότι οι Τουρκοκύπριοι διαθέτουν όπλα ανερχόμενα εις 10.000 περίπου τεμάχια». Εξοπλίστηκε δύναμη 10 χιλιάδων ανδρών Το ακριβές των τότε εκτιμήσεων της ΚΥΠ επιβεβαιώθηκε τριάντα πέντε χρόνια αργότερα σε σειρά δημοσιευμάτων στον τουρκικό τύπο (υπό τη μορφή απομνημονευμάτων Τούρκων αξιωματικών και αξιωματούχων) για τις δραστηριότητες της τουρκοκυπριακής οργάνωσης ΤΜΤ που ήταν και αυτή όπως και άλλες υπό τον άμεσο έλεγχο Τούρκων αξιωματικών που οργάνωναν και επέβλεπαν την εξοπλιστική δραστηριότητα (βλ. Milliyet, 11.6.1995). Όπως προκύπτει από τα δημοσιεύματα στη φάση αυτή του εξοπλισμού των Τουρκοκυπρίων, επιτεύχθηκε ο στόχος του εξοπλισμού δύναμης 10.000 ανδρών. «Τι τα θέλουν τα όπλα οι Τούρκοι αφού οι συμφωνίες τους παρέχουν όλα τα εχέγγυα, τα διασφαλίζοντα τα δικαιώματά τους εντός των πλαισίων της νέας Κυπριακής Δημοκρατίας» σχολίαζε, κατ' εξαίρεση, η Έκθεση της ΚΥΠ για την περίοδο 9/11/59 - 16/11/1959. Προφανώς, πέραν της ΚΥΠ κανείς δεν ήθελε να θέσει ένα τέτοιο ενοχλητικό ερώτημα πόσω δε μάλλον να το απαντήσει. Κάτι τέτοιο δεν θα ήταν «πολιτικά ορθό» διότι θα ερχόταν σε αντίθεση με το «πνεύμα Ζυρίχης - Λονδίνου» που μονομερώς και εργολαβικά καλλιεργούσε η Αθήνα. Αποκαλύψεις για την πρώτη προεδρική εκλογή Μια άλλη σκοπιμότητα που εντοπίζεται στην ημερολογιακή καταγραφή και αξιολόγηση των γεγονότων από την ΚΥΠ, ήταν και η αντικομουνιστική προκατάληψη των συγγραφέων των Εκθέσεων. Το γεγονός αυτό αναδεικνύεται από τον συγγραφέα αφού τοποθετεί τις δραστηριότητες και την αντικομουνιστική προσέγγιση της ΚΥΠ στο ιστορικό της πλαίσιο στην Ελλάδα μετά τον εμφύλιο πόλεμο. Θα ήταν ωστόσο μέγα λάθος εάν η «Κομμουνιστική Δραστηριότης» που καταγράφεται στις Εκθέσεις απορριφθεί εκ προοιμίου διότι πηγάζει από αντικομουνιστές ή ακροδεξιούς αναλυτές. Οι Εκθέσεις καταγράφουν εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρουσες εξελίξεις, καταστάσεις, πρόσωπα και πράγματα, όπως κατά την προεδρική προεκλογική περίοδο, για παράδειγμα, που ίσως να βλέπουν το φως της δημοσιότητας για πρώτη φορά. Τα γεγονότα και οι εξελίξεις που καταγράφονται από την ΚΥΠ θα πρέπει να αντιπαρατεθούν με τα γεγονότα της εποχής και να ελεγχθούν, εφόσον συγκρούονται με αυτά. Εάν υπάρχει κάτι το παρήγορο στην ταλαιπωρημένη ιστορία αυτού του τόπου, αυτό είναι το θαύμα της επιβίωσης του Κυπριακού Κράτους σε πείσμα όλων, μέσα και έξω από την Κύπρο, που ανέλαβαν εργολαβικά να το διαλύσουν πριν ακόμη ιδρυθεί. Σταδιακά, με αξιόλογα έργα όπως αυτά των Ηλιάδη και Packard, μαθαίνουμε την πραγματική πολιτική ιστορία του τόπου μας.

 

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From: "American Hellenic Institute" <pr@ahiworld.org>
To: "American Hellenic Institute" <pr@ahiworld.org>
Subject: Book Review by Nicholas G. Karambelas Published in The Washington Lawyer Magazine
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:26:47 -0500

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE      CONTACT: Georgia Economou

February 28, 2006      (202) 785-8430

No. 11/2006

Book Review by Nicholas G. Karambelas Published in

The Washington Lawyer Magazine

Washington, DC — The following book review by AHI Advisory Committee Member and Legal Counsel Nicholas G. Karambelas appears in the March 2006 issue of The Washington Lawyer Magazine.                        

An International Relations Debacle

The UN Secretary-General’s Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999–2004

By Claire Palley
Hart, 2005

Review by Nicholas G. Karambelas

        Aptly titled, An International Relations Debacle by Claire Palley documents in exhaustive detail the most recent initiative to solve the Cyprus issue. Named after United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, the Annan Plan went through five incarnations between 1999 and 2004, culminating in separate referenda held by the Turkish Cypriot minority and the Greek Cypriot majority in April 2004. The Turkish Cypriots approved the plan by 65 to 35 percent, whereas the Greek Cypriots disapproved by 76 to 24 percent.  The Annan Plan did not take effect because it required the approval of both communities.

        The Annan Plan is the latest in a series of failed attempts by non-Cypriot international actors to impose a governing structure and political process on the people who inhabit Cyprus. These failures began in 1878 when the Ottoman Empire ceded Cyprus to Great Britain and continued after Cyprus became a British crown colony in 1914 and into the Zurich Agreements under which the Republic of Cyprus was established and granted a stunted form of independence in 1960. After Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and began its illegal occupation of one-third of Cyprus, a succession of mediators from the United States, United Kingdom, and United Nations proposed plans to reunify Cyprus. In 1983 Turkey created a geopolitical entity in occupied Cyprus referred to as the Turkish Federated State of Northern Cyprus, which has purported to act as a state but which no other nation in the world, including the US, recognizes.

        Fundamentally, the Annan Plan established a predominantly Greek constituent state and a predominantly Turkish constituent state each of which would compose a unified state with some form of federal government. Like each of the previous attempts, the Annan Plan failed because the drafters consciously ignored three basic principles of Western political philosophy: (1) each citizen possesses fundamental rights that enable him or her to participate in governing; (2) representatives elected by the majority of the citizens govern; and (3) an independent judiciary protects the rights of any minority of citizens and enforces the property rights of all citizens. Instead of providing a political structure based on these principles, the political structure set forth in the Annan Plan, as well as in each previous plan, enabled the Turkish Cypriots to exercise an absolute veto over fundamental governing decisions. Using the absolute veto, the Turkish Cypriot minority could effectively stall the entire governing processes of the nation. No Western nation has a political process in which a minority of any kind has that kind of absolute veto. By abjuring such fundamental principles of democracy, the Annan Plan drafters effectively assured that it would fail.

        The drafters committed a similar error in the manner in which they purported to resolve the property issue. One of the most pernicious effects of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus is that  the Turkish military has displaced the rightful owners of real property in occupied Cyprus, a number of whom are U.S. citizens. Since 1974 Turkey has encouraged and abetted the possession and use of this property by Turkish Cypriots. Turkey has also imported many Turks from Turkey and settled them on the land of displaced owners, contrary to every applicable treaty and norm of international law. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of the Council of Europe has expressly ruled in several cases that the only rightful owners of that property are persons who hold title under the laws of the Republic of Cyprus and that Turkey is responsible for wrongfully displacing and excluding these owners from their property.

        Despite this clear jurisprudence, the Annan Plan established a highly complicated, ambiguous, and uncertain regime for resolving property matters. The regime was clearly designed to limit the number of displaced owners who could repossess their property. It required all claims asserted by displaced owners in the ECHR to be withdrawn, and that any displaced owner aggrieved as a result to seek redress from its constituent state. Because the overwhelming majority of displaced owners are Greek Cypriots, the practical effect of this provision would have required Greek Cypriots to pay the cost of the consequences of the Turkish invasion and continued occupation.

        From the facts recounted in the book about how the Annan Plan developed, it is easy to blame Kofi Annan for the deficiencies in the plan. Certainly, the reported record of the Annan administration makes him “low hanging fruit” for assigning to him responsibility for any UN failure. It is also easy to blame the Greek Cypriots and the Turkish Cypriots and the centuries of animosity between Greeks and Turks. However, the concepts underlying the Annan Plan as well as the poor draftsmanship of the actual text of the plan betray the hand of British, American, and other diplomats who were simply out of their depth.

        The Annan Plan reeks of diplomats conjuring up pet theories of a consociational federation without regard to the individuals who must live with the results long after the diplomats have moved on to the next embassy reception. Diplomats should stick to negotiating and drafting treaties and other international agreements between governments. Constitutions and other documents which adjust the rights and obligations of individuals that must ultimately be vindicated or enforced in a court are the province of practicing attorneys, not diplomats with law degrees. Diplomats refer to ambiguous and vague provisions in a legal document as compromises. Practicing attorneys refer to such provisions as lawsuits.

        Palley sees new opportunities for cooperation within the context of the European Union (EU). The Republic of Cyprus joined the EU on May 1, 2004. If the reunification of Cyprus is to occur at all, it will only occur within the context of the EU. The very legal rights, protections, and guarantees that the Turkish Cypriots claim will be denied to them in a reunified Republic of Cyprus are embodied in the three pillars of the EU, which are collectively referred to as the acquis communautaire. Yet, as the result of the continuing Turkish military occupation, the Cyprus accession documents state that the acquis communautaire is suspended in those portions of Cyprus occupied by Turkey. The Charter of Fundamental Freedoms and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, enforced, respectively, through the EU courts and the ECHR, can serve to safeguard the rights of the Turkish Cypriots in the same way in which the U.S. Bill of Rights and the U.S. federal courts have safeguarded the rights of minorities in the United States.

        The future of the Turkish Cypriots lies in their becoming full-fledged EU citizens. That will only occur when Cyprus is reunified based on the fundamental principles of Western political philosophy as reflected in the EU acquis communautaire.

        Beyond Cyprus, the strength of the book is that it provides an intimate firsthand view by a participant of international deal making, otherwise referred to as sausage making. Palley served as a consultant to the president of Cyprus during the period about which she writes. Because it focuses on the 1999–2004 period, the book does not contain much historical or political background, which is crucial to understanding how the Cyprus issue has evolved. Consequently, this is not the first book on Cyprus for the interested researcher or policymaker to read. However, it is an excellent and sobering case study of nation building at the international level. It should be required reading for the peoples of Iraq.

Nicholas G. Karambelas is a partner in Sfikas & Karambelas, LLP.


 

 

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The Weekly Standard

 

Cyprus Betrayed
Another fine mess, courtesy of Kofi Annan's U.N.
by Christopher Hitchens
12/05/2005, Volume 011, Issue 12

 

An International Relations Debacle
The U.N. Secretary-General's Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004
by Claire Palley
Hart, 604 pp., $45

THE COLLAPSE OF THE MORAL authority of the United Nations is partly but not exclusively a matter of dating.

The U.N. did lend its flag and insignia to the Anglo-American effort to stop Kim Il Sung's invasion of South Korea, though this official baptism was partly due to the absence of the Soviet delegate, and of his veto, during the crucial vote. Conor Cruise O'Brien, a former Irish envoy to the organization (Ireland, like Spain, having been denied original membership on the grounds that it never declared war on the Axis or joined the original Anglo-American "coalition of the willing") felt that the whole ethos of the "world body" was undermined by its abject failure, during its own first military expedition in 1960, to uphold the new independence of the Congo. He later wrote, in one of the best memoirs of service at the U.N., that it partly redeemed itself by keeping the issue of apartheid alive during the years when South Africa was "represented" only by a racist dictatorship whose leadership had once been interned for pro-Nazi sympathies.

At different times, the U.N. has seated Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan as the representative of China, and Ukraine and Belorussia as if they were independent of the Soviet Union. It has made high moral pronouncements to the effect that the only racism in the Middle East is practiced by Jews. It failed the Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechoslovaks in 1968 and the Tibetans throughout. It gave its top post to an Austrian who acquired his gaunt aspect in the Balkan killing fields of the Third Reich.

A conventional response to this dispiriting tale has been to say that the U.N. cannot be much better than the sum of its parts. This is no more than a tautology, though unlike most tautologies it is worth bearing in mind, since it contrasts with the almost fetishistic degree to which many of the same people believe that only the General Assembly or Security Council possesses the moral or legal authority to adjudicate or authorize a just war.

During the Cold War, the U.N. was indeed often paralyzed by "bloc" politics. Since then, however, there have been failures and disgraces that are attributable particularly to the weaknesses of the secretary general. Can one forget Boutros Boutros-Ghali dismissing accusations of the U.N.'s betrayal of Bosnia and sneering that people only minded about Bosnians because they were white? That would have been bad enough, if his deputy Kofi Annan had not almost simultaneously been ignoring the direct warnings from the U.N. commander in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, to the effect that more black Africans were about to be annihilated than anyone had ever seen killed in one week.

The case of Cyprus involves both the failure of the United Nations as an organization and the individual shortcomings of the present secretary general. There were two responsibilities inherited by the U.N. from the postwar League of Nations--the mandates in Palestine and South West Africa--and both of these led to statehood for Israel and, eventually, Namibia. The Republic of Cyprus, however, was a creation of the U.N. itself. A stupid colonial war, waged by the British between 1955 and 1960, essentially considered the island as British property in the same way as the other two European colonies, Ireland and Malta, had once been. The population of the island is roughly 82 percent Greek and 18 percent Turkish (with small but important Armenian and Maronite communities).

The historic Greek majority demanded enosis, or "union," with Greece proper, following the pattern of Crete and Rhodes. The Turkish minority echoed Ankara's demand that either the island be returned to Turkey, which had ceded it to Benjamin Disraeli during the Ottoman period as part of his triumphant campaign to secure the Suez Canal for Britain, or else partition it 50/50 between Turkey and Greece. This hopelessly zero-sum dilemma lost all of its charm for the British Tories after their evacuation of the Suez Canal in 1956. They were almost relieved when an Indian diplomat outpointed the Foreign Office by suggesting an independent Cyprus republic, shared between Greek and Turkish Cypriots and "guaranteed" against either enosis or taksim (the Turkish word for partition) by both Athens and Ankara.

After some fast footwork and the writing of a rather nerve-racking bi-communal constitution, the island became an independent state in 1960 under the presidency of the--for once one can use the word properly--charismatic Archbishop Makarios.

The success or failure of this post-colonial settlement had immense implications. In Cypriot towns and villages, the Orthodox church and the mosque can often be found within a minute's walk of one another. History shows virtually no example of fratricide between Cypriot Greeks and Cypriot Turks when left to themselves. If Muslims and Christians--who shared the lingua franca of English--could make a go of coexistence, then a promising example might be set for the immediate neighbors in the Levant. Partly for related reasons, Tito's multiethnic Yugoslavia also attached especial importance to relations with Cyprus.

The Cypriot microcosm did not last nearly as long as Tito's slightly artificial "brotherhood and unity," but this was largely because of the intervention of outside powers. Both Greece and Turkey sponsored extreme irredentist proxies in Cyprus with the help of the CIA, which preferred the ethnic fascists to the island's large Communist and Socialist parties. When this led to intercommunal fighting in 1963-64, President Makarios invited U.N. peacekeepers to prevent further violence, and U.N.FICYP is now one of the oldest U.N. contingents in being.

The relief, though, was purchased at a very high price: The lines drawn by U.N. local commanders became the sketch of a future partition that would reward, not punish, the ethnic extremists.

In the beginning, there were two sets of negotiations. The Greek and Turkish Cypriots elected communal leaders to negotiate local differences, while the recognized Republic of Cyprus dealt at the state level with disagreements among Greece, Turkey, and Great Britain, which retained bases on the island and the status of a "guarantor power" of Cypriot independence.

Over time, however, this essential distinction became blurred. And after 1974, it was abolished. In the summer of that year, after the ruling Greek junta in Athens had mounted a military coup against President Makarios, Turkey seized the opportunity to invade Cyprus. It might be argued that the first of these interventions had some legal justification, as a riposte to a fascist putsch; but in a brutal succeeding invasion the Turkish army grabbed the whole northern third of the island, expelled almost 200,000 Greeks from their homes, set up a "Turkish State of Northern Cyprus," and drew a walled line of partition right through the capital city of Nicosia.

This was the first time since 1945 that any border in Europe had been changed by unilateral force. Mainland Greek and Turkish forces fired on one another: the only time that two NATO members had ever done so. A member of the U.N., a candidate member of the European Union, a member of the British Commonwealth, had been violently dismembered. Injury was added by the importation of mainland settlers from Anatolia, aimed at altering the demographic balance of the island.

Faced with such a gross violation of all international laws, the United Nations had no choice but to pass a series of unambiguous and near-unanimous resolutions calling on Turkey to withdraw its forces. But on the ground, in a prefiguration of what was later to happen in Bosnia, the U.N. soldiers defended only themselves. And in subsequent negotiations, the U.N. bureaucracy treated the invader and the victim as morally equivalent.

Actually, the U.N. did worse than that. It did not insist on direct negotiations between the member states, since Turkey simply refuses to recognize the lawful Republic of Cyprus. Instead, it exceeded its mandate and asked the Cyprus government to treat with the proxies whom Turkey had installed as a local regime. Thus, the intercommunal and international strands became hopelessly entangled. Turkey, the real power and negotiator, could always pretend that it did not control its surrogates in Cyprus, and these surrogates could always pretend that their hands were tied by Turkey.

Rather as in today's Darfur, where the janjaweed are treated as if they are not Sudanese government mercenaries, the time wasted on the charade can be gainfully employed in completing the ethnic cleansing. Meanwhile, the jagged line of partition--the problem in the first place--began to look more permanent as it was garrisoned and, in effect, enforced by men in blue helmets.

Claire Palley, a renowned Anglo-South African expert in constitutional law, takes up this dismal story at the point where Kofi Annan decided to involve himself personally. Winston Churchill once said of some luckless opponent that he had "sat on the fence so long that the iron had entered into his soul." Kofi Annan's genius for compromise and for splitting differences without regard to principle is of the same order. An extraordinary opportunity presented itself in 2003 when, against all expectations, the Turkish Cypriots--the supposed beneficiaries of partition--rebelled politically against their imposed leadership and demanded to be part of the wider Cypriot accession to the European Union. The Turkish authorities were obliged to open the sealed checkpoints at the border and to permit visits and exchanges to take place from either side.

In this moment of "people power," it took a sort of anti-talent for the secretary general to find the most obstinate demands of the discredited Turkish leadership and to instate them as part of his "plan." Entirely heedless of the repeated U.N. resolutions demanding the demilitarization of the island, he postponed the date of eventual Turkish withdrawal until the remote future, and thus evolved a deal that was just out of the reach of the Greek Cypriot electorate. In a referendum on the proposal last year, the Turkish Cypriots voted "yes" for federal reunification and the Greek Cypriots voted "no."

To have produced this result is to have negated years of patient confidence-building between two estranged, but not divorced, peoples. It has meant that Cyprus joins the EU with its Turkish population still left out, which greatly complicates the wider question of Turkish membership and postpones a resolution until the next generation.

This small but suggestive fiasco will stand, along with others more notorious, as a memorial to Annan's dead-hand effect on international relations.

Christopher Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger, is most recently the author of Thomas Jefferson: Author of America.

 

 

 

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http://www.cyprusweekly.com.cy/default.aspx?FrontPageNewsID=304_4

Cyprus Weekly

 Hannay’s misleading diplomacy

 By Philippos Stylianou

 The latest reappearance in Cyprus of Lord David Hannay to attend the Wilton Park conference and sign copies of his book on the Annan Plan were seen as the first concrete effort to relaunch the plan after its overwhelming rejection by the Greek Cypriots in the April 24 referendum last year.

 This is after all the clear message of Hannay’s book, the first ever he wrote in his 44-year career in the British diplomatic service. Unfortunately, his first authorial attempt is as flawed as the plan that bears his hallmark so clearly and if the book is any contribution to Cyprus it is in helping the reader to understand how such an unacceptable solution was put before the Greek Cypriots, who had every right to expect something better after all they have been through.

 Outrageous

 Notwithstanding that he has never written a book on anything before, the budding author starts by making the outrageous assertion in his introduction that his work is the only impartial one that ever came out on the Cyprus problem.

 He writes off everybody else with these words: “Most of what has been written about Cyprus has been the work of members of one or the other of the two embattled communities (...) As such they are at best distorted by that prism, at worst little better than polemic and propaganda. And the non-Cypriots who have ventured into the field seem to have fallen prey to the same distortions...”

 Such was the sorry state of world bibliography on Cyprus until Lord Hannay came along to show the way: “ So, for someone who has always been a student of history, it was tempting to try to redress the balance a little.”

 Such a claim invites criticism not only because it lacks modesty but more importantly because it comes from someone who wrote about his involvement in Cyprus as a member of the British Diplomatic Service and Special Representative of Her Majesty’s Government.

 Nerve

 Knowing that Britain had been the colonial ruler of Cyprus for 82 years and still enjoys two military bases on the island, while also being one of its three quarantor powers, it takes nerve on Hannay’s part to even suggest that he can be impartial and unbiased.

 Besides, the novice writer gives himself away on page 107 where, in describing how the various players were gearing up for the new negotiations, he writes: “For the UK, Cyprus itself mattered a good deal both for historical reasons and the continuing presence of the Sovereign Base areas on the island..”

 He must think his readers very naive if he expects them to believe that serving UK interests was not part of his job.

 There will be more on what Hannay’s real Cyprus job was, but let’s for the time being give him the benefit of the doubt and see how impartial he really is.

 Lies

 The first chapter of his book is a nine-page historical background which teems with inaccuracies, distortions of facts, deliberate generalisations and downright lies. Probably aware of this, Hannay tries to cover up his trail by stating that “that chapter is neither an original product, nor is it the fruit of deep historical research, but the minimum needed to assist comprehension of the negotiation itself.” This, however, does not explain how and why all the inaccuracies, distortions, generalisations and lies paint the Greek Cypriots in a negative colour and present the Turkish Cypriots as always the victims.

 Referring to the EOKA anticolonial campaing of the 1950s, Hannay writes that the Turkish Cypriots were “attacked and harassed” by their “Greek Cypriot neighbours”, whilst in reality the reverse was the case. It was the Turkish Cypriots who attacked and murdered the Greek Cypriots, either as members of the security forces or as mobs who burnt and looted Greek neighbourhoods under a big colonial yawn.

 Hannay also heaps all the responsibility for the communal confrontation in 1963 on to the Greek Cypriots for wanting to “push through unconstitutionally a number of constitutional amendments”. Had Lord Hannay as “someone who has always been a student of history,” taken the trouble to pick up the book “My Deposition” by former President Glafkos Clerides, whom he has no reason to mistrust, he would have found out how President Makarios had been encouraged in his move to amend the Cyprus constitution by the British government.

 Had he done so, he could have perhaps been interested to find out where all the related documents have since disappeared to from the Foreign Office and the British High Commission in Nicosia.

 Still on the same historical period, Hannay claims that the “Cyprus National Guard, the Republic’s army, was entirely Greek Cypriot in composition and accordingly partisan.” To outsiders this sounds like the murderous Greeks had all the military power in their hands and again began to sloughter the poor Turks. In fact there was no National Guard when the intercommunal conflict flared up. The infant Republic’s army, called the Cyprus Army, to be composed of both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, never really got off the ground.

 Napalm

 The National Guard was hastily put together in the face of the dangerous situation in the summer of 1964, just in time to check Turkey’s first attempt to invade the island. There is, of course, no mention of the naplam bombs that rained on Greek villages by the Turkish airforce, killing scores of civilians.

 Hannay’s blender of history really gets out of control and splashes him all over when he places the Greek Cypriot armed EOKA B organisation in the early 1960s together with the Turkish Cypriot TMT one and calls them both militias. The historic truth, of course, is that EOKA B was formed in 1972 and far from being a militia, it was trying to overthrow Makarios’ government and ended up being stooges to the Athens junta coup against him.

 EOKA B never lifted a finger against the Turkish Cypriots, and the reason Hannay antedates it by more than a decade is probably to have a Greek Cypriot villain alongside TMT. The latter was formed by Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash in the late 1950s - according to his own proud admission - and became instrumental in starting the 1963 conflict by targeting both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. It was particularly active in forcing Turkish Cypriots to leave their villages and move into enclaves in the north, often smuggled inside UN trucks driven by British peacekeepers (see debate in the Cyprus House of Representatives).

 And now we come to 1974 and the Turkish invasion, which according to Lord Hannay was prompted “by some high-profile attacks on Turkish Cypriot enclaves” by the Greek Cypriot putchists. This is a straight lie, of course, since not a single shot was fired against the Turkish Cypriots before the Attila landing started on Cyprus. To the contrary, the coupists, probably realising their folly, broadcasted frantic reassurances to the Turkish Cypriots for Ankara and the world to hear, that they had nothing to fear from them. Naturally, it was too late; Turkey had been waiting for years for the excuse to invade.

 Tilted

 Hannay tells his readers that this amazing anthology of historical distortions and lies “is the minimum needed to assist comprehension of the negotiations (for the Annan Plan) itself.” Indeed, they are very helpful in understanding why the Annan plan - Hannay’s brain child - tilted so heavily against the Greek Cypriots and satisfied almost every demand of the Turkish Cypriots and Ankara.

 There are, of course, other monuments to Hannay’s professed impartiality, besides the historical ones. He criticizes, for example, Cyprus Government efforts to enhance its defence capabilities by writing that “...arms purchases by the Government of Cyprus which, together with mounting Turkish deployments, had resulted in the island being one of the most heavily armed places on earth.”

 Nothing, of course, about the 99-square mile British military bases in Cyprus whose arsenal also included atomic weapons.

 Hannay also likes to refer to the Turkish settlers as “Turkish citizens” who popped over to the occupied north of the island for a casual job. This reminds one of a BBC report in the thick of the Turkish invasion in 1974 about an Israeli boat picking up 300 “Turkish citizens” off the western coast of Cyprus. They were in fact part of the crew of the Turkish destroyer “Kocatepe” sunk by their own airforce, which mistook it for a Greek navy boat.

 Conned

 A shocking instance of how the Greek Cypriots were misled and practically conned into accepting the process leading up to the Annan Plan is inadvertently revealed by Hannay on page 71 of his book. He writes that one of the obstacles in clearing the way for the big push on Cyprus was getting the government of Glafcos Clerides to abandon his plans to deploy the Russian S-300 missiles on the island in 1997. They argued that “the best form of security for the Greek Cypriots was an internationally guaranteed settlement and not the acquisition of additional weapons.”

 Yet, there were no international guarantees in the settlement proposed by the Annan Plan, but a worse repetition of the old tripartite guarantees, leaving Cyprus exposed to arbitrary military action by Turkey at the slightest pretext. As everybody knows by now, this was one of the main reasons why the Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected the Annan Plan.

 In his book, Hannay sneers at the Cypriots for seeing British conspiracies all the time and sardonicallly remarks that there was none of this when Britain threw in 45% of its Bases to enhance the territorial proposals of the Annan Plan.

 What he conceals, however, is that although most of the proposed territory was in the Dhekelia Base and much of it coastal, there was no sea to go with it. Not only Britain retained the exclusive use of the sea area of the Eastern SBA under the 1960 Treaty of Establishment, it also wanted to redraw its boundaries in such way as to correspond to coastal land that was to be given to the Turkish Cypriots and to the Greek Cypriots respectively. Why this and why be secretive about it? Could it be that the British had future plans about Dhekelia if the Annan Plan came to pass, such as abandoning it altogether? And to whom?

 Naturally, there is no mention either of how the two so-called treaties between the pseudostate and Turkey that would practically bring the whole island under the direct control of the Turkish navy and which the Greek Cypriots knew nothing about when they voted in the April 24 referendum came to be embodied in the Annan plan. If they knew about this, the rejection would have been 100% and not 76%.

 The truth

One could go on to write a book about Hannay’s extraordinary book on Cyprus, but it could be more appropriate at this point to hear his own definition of what his Cyprus job really was.

 In his interview to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which in its recent inquiry report on Cyprus accorded Bible status to his book, Hannay explained how and why he was appointed United Kingdom’ Special Representative for Cyprus.

 Quoting from page 50 of the report “... the British Government felt at the time, so they told me, that having committed themselves to Cyprus’ membership of the European Union and that having some quite tricky implications for the situation of the Eastern Mediterranean, it was really part of our duty to make a further effort, a further serious effort, to get a settlement to the Cyprus problem to obviate some of the tensions that would arise.”

 The truth is out at last. Hanney was not appointed to work for a Cyprus solution that would cater for the genuine needs of its genuine people, but to tackle “tricky implications in the Eastern Mediterranean” and “obviate tensions.”

 This finally explains the intricate provisions of the Annan Plan masterminded by Hannay which made a parody of Cyprus’ EU membership and an empty shell of the proposed new state’s sovereignty.

 It is regrettable that the arrogance, conceit and unashamed deception displayed by the former UK Cyprus representative in his first ever published work does not permit either a milder criticism or a more dignified writing style. Besides, it would be unfair to the increasing number of British historians, journalists and politicians who are writing and speaking out the truth about Cyprus and are so scornfully dismissed by Hannay.

 ========================================================

http://www.phileleftheros.com.cy/main/main.asp?gid=406&id=327235

 Φιλελεύθερος 8.5.2005

Μάρτιν Πάκαρντ

Χάνεϊ, ο λάθος άνθρωπος στην αναζήτηση λύσεων

Ο Λόρδος Χάνεϊ έχει γράψει ένα πολύ ευκολοδιάβαστο βιβλίο. Είναι όμως λυπηρό, ότι αυτό το βιβλίο δεν προσφέρει τίποτε το αξιόλογο στη συζήτηση για το Κυπριακό ζήτημα. Ξεκινώντας από μια λανθασμένη αντίληψη της Κυπριακής ιστορίας, προχωρά με διασκεδαστικό τρόπο σε λανθασμένα συμπεράσματα. Το ότι κάπου στη μέση του βιβλίου εμφανίζονται αποσπάσματα από το ημερολόγιό του, που έχουν ψήγματα αντικειμενικότητας, δεν αφαιρεί καθόλου από την υποκειμενικότητα του έργου στο σύνολό του. Οπωσδήποτε θα βλάψει το ζήτημα της Κύπρου, και ίσως βοηθήσει το Λονδίνο στο να στρέψει αλλού την προσοχή της διεθνούς γνώμης παρά στην πραγματικότητα των προβλημάτων που έχουν επιβληθεί στην Κύπρο. Θα ισχυροποιήσει επίσης, την αντίληψη στην Κύπρο ότι η αγγλική γραφειοκρατία (Whitehall) θα πρέπει να σταματήσει να εμφανίζει εαυτήν ως ικανό ερμηνευτή των Κυπριακών υποθέσεων.
O Χάνεϊ ήταν ο λάθος άνθρωπος για να αναμειχθεί στην εξεύρεση λύσεων στη Κύπρο: παραείναι έξυπνος, πολύ αλαζόνας και επίμονος στις αντιλήψεις του, και καθοριστικά αντιπρόσωπος του κατεστημένου της αγγλικής γραφειοκρατίας. Ήρθε με τη φήμη του πετυχημένου διαπραγματευτή από τα Ηνωμένα Έθνη, ως κατασκευαστής συμβιβασμών παρά ως υπερασπιστής της δικαιοσύνης: στην Κύπρο, όπως αναμενόταν, εργάστηκε για ένα συμβιβασμό μεταξύ εξωγενών συμφερόντων και Κυπριακών δικαιωμάτων. Η Κύπρος όμως χρειαζόταν ένα διαμεσολαβητή με πραγματική πίστη σε μια δίκαιη λύση. Χρειαζόταν ένας άνθρωπος που θα ήταν υπόλογος στον Κυπριακό λαό και όχι σε κάποια εξωτερική δύναμη. Χρειαζόταν κάποιος με αισθήματα συμπάθειας προς τους πάσχοντες Κυπρίους παρά με δείγματα διανοητικής ανωτερότητας και θεωρητικοποίησης των πάντων. Χρειαζόταν κάποιος με ευρύτητα σκέψης παρά ένας οπαδός της realpolitik. Ο Χάνεϊ είναι οπαδός της «παρθενογένεσης» για την Κύπρο. Πιστεύει ότι η Κυπριακή ιστορία πρέπει να ξεκινήσει από το 1990, περίπου, ενώ θα πρέπει τα 30 χρόνια Τουρκικής κατοχής καθώς και τα υπερδιπλάσια χρόνια αγγλικής διπλοπροσωπίας για τη διχοτόμηση της Κύπρου, να θεωρηθούν ως «καλώς καμωμένα», παρά ως ξεχωριστά ζητήματα που πρέπει να αντιμετωπιστούν προτού αρχίσει μια ουσιαστική διαδικασία διακοινοτικών συνομιλιών.
Είναι εμφανή τα δύο μέτρα και δύο σταθμά σε αυτό το βιβλίο, με τη διεθνή πίεση προς τη Συρία για να αποχωρήσει από το Λίβανο, από τη μια, και τη διεθνή ανοχή της συνεχιζόμενης τουρκικής στρατιωτικής και κατασκοπευτικής παρουσίας στην Κύπρο. Τα Ηνωμένα Έθνη και οι Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες έχουν υποστηρίξει με πάθος την απελευθέρωση των λαών από αποικιοκρατικούς ζυγούς. Είναι λοιπόν δύσκολο για αυτούς να κατανοήσουν ότι η Αγγλία και η Τουρκία έχουν επιβάλει μια μορφή νεο-αποικιοκρατίας στην Κύπρο;
Το εθνικο-διαχωριστικό σύνταγμα που επιβλήθηκε στον Κυπριακό λαό το 1960 ήταν το πιο πετσοκομμένο και λιγότερο δημοκρατικό προϊόν από όλες τις διαδικασίες ανεξαρτησίας των λαών στη σύγχρονη ιστορία. Βασίστηκε στον εθνοτικό διαχωρισμό. Έδωσε σε ξένες δυνάμεις το δικαίωμα να ανακατεύονται στα εσωτερικά της Κύπρου προς επιδίωξη ιδίων συμφερόντων. Απέτυχε ολοκληρωτικά στο να θέσει τα θεμέλια της συνένωσης του Κυπριακού λαού σε ένα δυναμικό συνεταιρισμό με προοπτική. Με ακριβώς τον ίδιο τρόπο οι αρχιτέκτονες του Σχεδίου Ανάν έχουν καταθέσει προτάσεις οι οποίες θα υποχρέωναν τους Κυπρίους να δεχθούν ρυθμίσεις οι οποίες βρίσκονται σε τεράστια αντίθεση με παραδεκτές διαδικασίες και διατάξεις τόσο στον ΟΗΕ όσο και στην Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση (ΕΕ), και επί πλέον δεν κάνουν το παραμικρό για να τους ενθαρρύνουν προς έναν πραγματικό συνεταιρισμό.
Ο λόγος για αυτές τις αντιθέσεις δεν έχει καθόλου να κάμει με τα όποια διακοινοτικά προβλήματα. Η μαζική και διαρκής εκδήλωση της διακοινοτικής συμβατότητας στο επίπεδο των λαών των δύο κοινοτήτων, από όταν άνοιξαν τα οδοφράγματα στην Πράσινη Γραμμή το 2003, έστειλε στο χρονοντούλαπο της ιστορίας τον μύθο, που είχε καλλιεργηθεί από ξένους καλοθελητές που κοίταζαν τα δικά τους συμφέροντα, ότι η όποια επανένωση των δύο κοινοτήτων θα έφερνε οξύτατες αντιπαραθέσεις και βίαια επεισόδια. Ο πυρήνας της δυσκολίας στην παραγωγή μιας ειρηνευτικής πρότασης για την Κύπρο που θα ήταν αποδεκτή από ΗΠΑ και Μ. Βρετανία, αφορά την αντίληψη που έχουν η Αγγλία και η Τουρκία για τα στρατηγικά συμφέροντά τους στην Κύπρο, καθώς και με τις προσπάθειες της Ουάσιγκτον και του Λονδίνου να κρατήσουν τον Τουρκικό στρατό «με το μέρος τους».

Αντιμετώπισε την εισβολή όπως η Αλίκη τη χώρα των θαυμάτων
Η αποτυχία του Λόρδου Χάνεϊ να αντιμετωπίσει την πραγματικότητα της κατοχής μεγάλου μέρους της Κύπρου από τον τουρκικό στρατό προσδίδει στο βιβλίο του την εικόνα της Αλίκης στη Χώρα των Θαυμάτων. Ο ίδιος, όπως και άλλοι Βρετανοί σχολιαστές, εισηγούνται ότι οι Ελληνοκύπριοι πρέπει να εμπιστευτούν την καλή θέληση του τουρκικού στρατού. Με δεδομένη την από πολλού εκφρασμένη απαίτηση της ηγεσίας αυτού του στρατού για ανάγκη άσκησης ελέγχου σε όλη την Κύπρο, η εισήγηση του Λόρδου Χάνεϊ είναι είτε ύπουλη ή το λιγότερο άστοχη.
Σε ένα απαράδεκτο άρθρο του με τίτλο «Οι Ελληνοκύπριοι πρέπει να πληρώσουν το τίμημα για τις ανοησίες τους», ο Χάνεϊ κατηγορούσε τους Ελληνοκυπρίους και τον πρόεδρο της Κυπριακής Δημοκρατίας. Δεν υπήρχε ούτε μια λέξη ταπείνωσης, ή έστω η εισήγηση ότι αυτοί που τσάτρα-πάτρα έφτιαξαν τους όρους του 5ου Σχεδίου Ανάν ίσως απέτυχαν στο στόχο τους να έχουν μια ισοβαρή πρόταση, ή η παραμικρή αναφορά στο ότι η ψήφος των Ελληνοκυπρίων υποδήλωνε ένα εκλογικό Σώμα με εξυπνάδα. Αν, όπως υποψιάζομαι, οι απόψεις του Χάνεϊ σε αυτό το άρθρο είναι οι ίδιες με αυτές της αγγλικής γραφειοκρατίας, τότε είναι εύκολο να κατανοήσουμε γιατί οι σχέσεις Λευκωσίας - Λονδίνου έχουν φτάσει στο ψυχρότερο τους σημείο.
Αποτελεί πράγματι μεγάλο πρόβλημα για την Κύπρο το γεγονός ότι η Αγγλία έχει γίνει αποδεκτή από ένα μεγάλο μέρος της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, των Ηνωμένων Εθνών και των ΗΠΑ ως ένας πραγματικός και αμερόληπτος γνώστης των Κυπριακών υποθέσεων. Οι άνθρωποι σε θέσεις ευθύνης ακούν με προσοχή τη γνώμη ανθρώπων όπως ο Χάνεϊ και η γραφειοκρατία του Whitehall, ενώ οι προσπάθειες των Κυπρίων για εξηγήσεις ή καταρρίψεις αβάσιμων ισχυρισμών αγνοούνται. Σημαντικοί πολιτικοί και σχολιαστές των μέσων ενημέρωσης, γνωστοί για την αντικειμενικότητά τους, αρνούνται να ακούσουν κριτική για το 5ο Σχέδιο Ανάν, ισχυριζόμενοι ότι ήταν η τελευταία καλή ευκαιρία για τους Ελληνοκυπρίους, ή ακόμη να σκεφτούν ότι αυτή η ίδια η απόρριψή του είναι ένα τρανό παράδειγμα της δημοκρατίας την οποία με τόση εμμονή προωθούν σε άλλα μέρη του πλανήτη.
Η Αγγλία, που έχει προωθήσει με συνέπεια τις επιδιώξεις της στην Κύπρο μέσω διευθετήσεων οι οποίες ήταν εθνο-διαχωριστικές, ακόμη και όταν υπήρχαν εναλλακτικοί δρόμοι, πρέπει τώρα να αντιμετωπίζεται ως μια χώρα με αποκλειστικό γνώμονα το δικό της συμφέρον και μόνο, οπότε έχει αποκλείσει εαυτήν από την όποια περαιτέρω συμμετοχή σε εξεύρεση λύσης που να μην εξυπηρετεί μονομερώς τα συμφέροντα κάποιου. Επί πλέον, η Αγγλία είναι ο πιο ένθερμος υποστηρικτής της εισόδου της Τουρκίας στην Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση. Σε αυτό τον ρόλο έχει μετέλθει κάθε μέσον για να πείσει άλλες χώρες-μέλη της ΕΕ ότι η τουρκική κατοχή του βόρειου τμήματος της Κύπρου, απόλυτα παράνομη κατά το διεθνές δίκαιο και τα ψηφίσματα του ΟΗΕ, πρέπει να αγνοηθεί τελείως. Ο Χάνεϊ και το βιβλίο του, με την προσφορά του σε αυτό το παιγνίδι δημοσίων σχέσεων, προβάλλουν μια στάση βασιλικότερη του βασιλέως η οποία δεν καταπίνεται με τίποτε αλλά στέκεται στο λαιμό όσων έχουν πραγματική κατανόηση των Κυπρίων και συμπάθεια προς αυτούς.
Το βιβλίο μπορεί να προταθεί για την εξαίρετη χρήση της αγγλικής γλώσσας, για την απίστευτη εκδοχή της προσπάθειας μιας ξένης δύναμης να επιβάλει εκ των άνω τον σχηματισμό ενός έθνους (κρατικού μορφώματος στην περίπτωση αυτή) και ως καλό ανάγνωσμα πριν κοιμηθεί κάποιος. Δεν μπορεί όμως με τίποτε να θεωρηθεί ως βοήθημα στην κατανόηση των προβλημάτων της Κύπρου, ή ως βραχίονας σύγκλισης και συμφιλίωσης.

΅Cyprus: The Search for a solution (Κύπρος: Η αναζήτηση μιας λύσης), Λονδίνο: I.B. Tauris 2005. X +256 σελ., Λόρδος David Hannay. Βιβλιοκριτική \ από τον Martin Packard*

*Ο Μάρτιν Πάκαρντ ήταν για 21 χρόνια αξιωματικός στο Βασιλικό Ναυτικό της Μεγάλης Βρετανίας. Ανάμεσα στα καθήκοντά του κατά την περίοδο αυτή ήταν και η τριετής θητεία του ως συμβούλου πληροφοριών στο Αρχηγείο Μεσογείου - Νοτιοανατολική πτέρυγα του ΝΑΤΟ και του Αρχηγού Μεσογείου, καθώς και η εξάμηνη απόσπασή του στην Κύπρο (Ιανουάριος-Ιούνιος 1964) όπου ήταν υπεύθυνος για την καθιέρωση της Μεσολάβησης Επιτόπου Ειρήνευσης στην Κύπρο.

Claire Palley: Turkey must solve the Cyprus question

by Maria Myles

 Nicosia, Jun 8 (CNA) -- The comings and goings, the public as well as the behind the scenes consultations and machinations of the various players in the most recent UN attempt to settle the question of Cyprus are the theme of a book, entitled ''An International Relations Debacle'', as seen through the eyes of the author, Dr Claire Palley, who has been involved in a series of negotiations over the past few decades. In an interview with CNA, she explains why she felt she had to write this account of what happened and looks ahead to future developments in the continuing effort to find a negotiated settlement in Cyprus. ''The outside world was completely mesmerized by the view put out by the UN about what had happened, the true picture must be given, it must be available to opinion shapers because as long as they believed that the Greek Cypriot side did not want a solution, there would be no impetus for negotiations,'' she said. She said that the process, which had initially begun with a view to reaching a solution, deviated to ''accommodate Turkey and the UN abused the powers given to it'' for suggestions on matters of deep division between the Greek Cypriot and the Turkish Cypriot positions. Dr Palley calls on her readership to read the book ''with an open mind, knowing that I have sympathies with the Greek Cypriot side.'' ''Take me with a pinch of salt,'' she said in a characteristic manner, when asked if she thought her point of view was convincing. She said she shared the view expressed by Britain's representative for Cyprus, in his book, that unless Turkey gives its seal of approval to a solution, there can be no settlement. ''Turkey has to be brought round to the view that it is to her advantage to settle, noone will use force. The reality is that powers are not going to push Turkey, it will have to decide if it is on its own interests, if it wants to join the EU,'' she said. Responding to questions, she said that at the last phase of the negotiations in Burgenstock, Switzerland, once the UN had realised that President Tassos Papadopoulos was not going to be pushed around, they decided to impose things on the Greek Cypriot side. ''I personally believe that they knew from after the New York meetings they had a pen and could write what they wanted because nobody could stop them,'' Dr Palley said, adding that the UN would continue with this kind of tactics if they were to come back ''because they are so used to doing this, they see this as negotiation in its final stages.'' In New York, she said, in February 2004 when Papadopoulos and the then Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash met with the UN there was ''enormous international pressure with implicit threats to recognise the Turkish Cypriot regime in northern Cyprus.'' This, she pointed out, led to an agreement on tactics and procedures which neither Cypriot side wanted. On what can be done to bring about a solution, she said the two sides have to talk seriously to each other, recalling that ''they have never really talked directly face to face seriously except when (former) President Clerides talked about security.'' She explained that former Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash had actually dictated a proposal, which the Greek Cypriot side accepted. Denktash subsequently withdrew his proposal but the UN had pocketed and used the serious concessions Clerides had already made on the issue of security. Dr Palley is of the opinion that some UN people had great doubts about proceeding with the referendum on the Annan plan, but as she points out others had a job to finish and ''fix it so that Turkey looks Mr Clean.'' She said that there are possibilities for both sides, through serious negotiations, to move nearer and if the two sides talk about common interests they will see there are many things that can be done. ''Turkey has no reason to stop a settlement, she can surrender benefits she has. She has to pay a cost, an internal political cost,'' she added. On lost opportunities and mistakes by the Greek Cypriot sides, Dr Palley said the anti-colonial struggle was wrong, the lack of generosity during negotiations in the late 1960s was also a mistake. She said the next lost opportunity was February 1993 when the impetus was lost.

 CNA/MM/GP/2005 ENDS, CYPRUS NEWS AGENCY

08/06/2005

=========================

Marios Evriviades

An International Relations Debacle: The UN Secretar-General’s Mission of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004. By Claire Palley. Oxford, UK and Portland Oregon, USA. Hart Publishing,  2005. ISBN 1-84113-578-X. 335 pp,  illust., hardcover, $45.

Claire Palley’s An International Relation Debacle  with its contextual subtitle “The UN  Secretary – General’s Missions of Good Offices in Cyprus 1999-2004”, is a book about modern Cypriot political history and the pivotal role of the United Nations in its making,  that no student of the Eastern Mediterranean but also of the UN and its “good offices” machinery, can either ignore or dismiss. Its almost four hundreds pages are packed with original materials and documents that are extensively and painstaking footnoted and indexed. Included is also a total of nine appendices running over one hundred pages. One of these, Appendix 6, is a meticulously assembled table comparing the various modifications of the UN Annan Plan for Cyprus that only a legal expert as well an insider with years of continued involvement and archival access could have prepared. Having said this, any objective assessment of the book must factor in not merely the author’s professional background but also her two decades long involvement with Cyprus. Claire Palley is by training a comparative constitutional lawyer, a former UK member of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minories (1988-1998) and former constitutional consultant to the President of Cyprus (1980-2004). She in fact resigned from her last post for the specific purpose of writing the present book and she so forewarns her readers. She furthermore acknowledges that she is an advocate of a pro-Cypriot perspective. The argument she sets about to substantiate, and does so satisfactorily, is  that the Annan Plan in its various  incarnations and more particularly in its fifth and final version (Annan V), was a specifically orchestrated attempt  to legitimize the fruits of the 1974 Turkish attack on Cyprus that forced  one third of the indigenous population to flee their homes and properties, left the third northern part of the country  under Turkey’s military occupation and forced the de facto partition of a UN member state. Thus with Turkey’s policies on Cyprus receiving the UN seal of approval through Annan V, Ankara would have been freed of the shackles  she created with the 1974 attack, in order to further her more pressing strategic objectives.

In the aftermath of the Turkish invasion the UN Secretary-General was mandated by the Security Council to use the Secretariat’s “good offices” machinery to remedy the situation and to reunify Cyprus, in accordance with the UN Charter and specific resolutions as well as the norms and principles of international law. Instead, charges Palley, beaurocrats in the Secretariat with the more often than not nominal approval of the Secretary-General, abused and corrupted their Security Council mandate -- and attempted , through Annan V,  to browbeat  one side of the Cyprus  dispute  --the 80% Greek- Cypriot majority population -- into accepting a plan that decriminalized Turkey’s post-1974 behavior, ensconced the Turkey Army (but also the British military) permanently on the island, legitimized the illegal presence of thousands  of Turks that the Ankara government settled on Cyprus in order to alter  the demography of the  country and  obliged those victimized by the 1974 invasion to pay for its costs and damages. Adding insult to injury, the Annan plan would have denied Cypriots recourse to international courts for property claims and other grievances   arising out of its implementation. All the while, the Annan - established new state (misnamed “United Cyprus Republic”) would have acquired membership in the European Union and would have continued as an “independent” and “sovereign” member-state  of the United Nations.

In the event, when on April 24, 2004, Annan V (with its staggering 10,000 plus pages that took its final form the day before) was placed before the Cypriots for approval it was rejected. According to agreed procedure, Greek and Turkish Cypriots were to cast a “yes” or “no” vote for the plan in simultaneous but separate UN sponsored  referenda. Both referenda had to receive separate majorities. Otherwise the Annan Plan, according to its own terms, would have become  “null and void”, which is what happened  to it on April 24, 2004.  The Greek Cypriots rejected the plan by a three - to- one margin  (75,8%) while the Turkish Cypriots approved it by    a two - to - one margin (65%). The Turkish Cypriot vote, it should be noted, did not genuinely reflect the state of affairs within the community since amongst  those voting (according to the UN) were thousands of non-Cypriots Turks, citizens in fact of another country – Turkey. As already noted, successive Ankara governments had implanted  these people in Cyprus for patent political purposes.

What comes plainly through in Palley’s learned  treatise, even if at times emotionally and sarcastically, is that the actual brokers of the Annan Plan were least concerned about the suffering Cypriots  (subjected, in less than two generations, to a colonial war, a civil war, a coup, an invasion and an occupation) and most about serving and balancing the interests of outside powers including, in the case of  Secretariat officials, their  personal and politically ambitious agendas,  that violated their solemn obligations as interventional civil servants.

In its final phase Annan V was in fact driven by two exogenous to Cyprus factors while simultaneously running against a deadline,  May 1, 2004. On that day Cyprus, along with nine other candidate countries (having all successfully completed years of arduous neogotiations) was scheduled to become an EU member.

The two exogenous factors were the US war preparations against Iraq and Turkey’s strategic objective of obtaining the unanimous consent of all EU members,  (including Cyprus) during the EU summit of December 17 2004, for a specific date to commence negotiations with Brussels for her own accession into the Union. In the Annan plan there was a confluence of these two factors. Washington’s Plan A  for attacking Iraq was contingent on Ankara’s active participation. According  to this plan  US troops were to open of a second front against Baghdad by attacking through Turkey. As for  Turkey’s one and only plan for obtaining a date for opening negotiations with Brussels, that was contingent on her accepting UN proposals for Cyprus that Ankara persistently opposed in the past primarily because these plans obligated Turkey to eventually withdraw all her occupations troops (from would be EU member) Cyprus. This was anathema for Turkey’s caudillos who were unwilling to consent to any Cyprus solution that obliged them to withdraw their army from the island. But in turn their intransigent position meant that Turkey’s EU strategy would have gone nowhere.

This state of affairs had to be remedied and remedied it was through Annan V. What eventually happened between the years 2002-2004 that climaxed with the Annan plan fiasco, is a fascinating story of international intrigue, manipulation and deceitful tactics, many of which, but not all, are exhaustively detailed in Palley’s book[1]. Many of them she  witnessed firsthand or understood through her active involvement. The role of Annan’s Cyprus Special Adviser Alvaro de Soto  (and to considerable extend also that of Britain’s Special Representative to the Cyprus, David Hannay) stands out in this respect. De Soto commanded a large team of experts for his mission that was aided and guided by the US and the UK and, unfortunately as it turned out (and documented in the book pp. 48-55) also surreptiously funded by the US with a single minded objective. This was to first secure Ankara’s consent, at the expense of  a balanced plan  (that is a prerequisite  for a successful negotiation) and then proceed to frogmarch the weaker party into accepting it in order to meet the May 1st  deadline. In  turn the referenda’s  positive outcome would have freed Turkey to address its other pressing domestic and international concerns.

In this respect UN member Cyprus,  which placed its faith in the “good offices” of the Secretary-General, confident that the principles of the Charter, relevant to Cyprus  Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, jus cogens  rules, and other international law restraints  and practices, would have ensured a balanced UN Cyprus proposal, found itself not merely shortchanged but also faced with the prospect of being delegitimized as  a state. And there is  no precedent in the international system of a state that voluntarily self-destructs in order to accommodate the interests of others,  even when they  purport to speak for the international community[2]. 

Claire Palley’s  justifiable complaint is that because Cyprus is a very small state partially occupied by a powerful one, that is additionally patronized by  even more powerful western powers (the US and the UK), is treated to double standards when it comes to her sovereignty and independence. This, she argues, should not be so and it is incumbent on the UN, its civil servants and primarily the Secretary-General and his staff, not to be blindsided by global power brokers, and accommodate their whims and interests at the expense of fundamental rights and principles that form the backbone of the UN and upon which small and weak state depend for  survival.

The record of Annan V shows that Cyprus was in essence treated as a non-sovereign state not merely by Turkey , which was to be expected, but also by the UN Secretariat and its representation  in Cyprus. In this sense what Palley chronicles and analyzes with respect to the UN Secretariat and its “good offices” machinery, has implications that extend way beyond a mere case study (Cyprus) and touch upon the very essence and role of the Secretariat,  its credibility and, above  all, its obligation to uphold Charter principles and to  function objectively. The Secretariat can not, as it happened with Cyprus, become an enabler or a marketing instrumentality for interests that seek to turn the Charter on its head in order to implementer their agendas. This  is exactly what the UN Secretariat attempted but failed to do with regards  to Cyprus, because at the end of the day it run against the majority community that refused to the frogmatched,  and declared so loudly and  in a democratic way.

Palley’s book is a record of this affair which may in fact represent a trend (a UN culture?[3]) within the UN at a period of time when the office of the  Secretariat but also the UN system as a hole  is  under heavy and justifiable criticism over  (abdicating ?) its mandated international role. If this trend continues unabated and is not reversed, the existing restraints and constraints against arbitrariness, illegalities and against the use of force that are embedded in the Charter will gain acceptability, nay even legitimacy. Will states then become better off if self-help prevails in the international system? Those states that may entertain delusions in this respect must be reminded that eventually the bells toll for every one.

Marios L. Evriviades is Assistant Professor of International relations, Panteion University, Athens.


 

[1] Turkey’s predicament and the central role of Cyprus in it was articulated best by Assistant Secretary of State for European affairs Elizabeth Jones at the annual Washington American Turkish Association conference of June 6, 2005. Jone’s comments, through made in 2005, were referring and describing US policies during the crucial 2002-2004 period. According to Jone’s, “ Cyprus was a terribly crucial issue for the U.S. The U.S. was of the view that Turkey’s image in the world regarding the Cyprus issue should change. Turkey should be considered as the “good guy” on Cyprus thus changing the existing perceptions in the world. The U.S. recognizes the good job done by Turkey on Cyprus. Because Cyprus, with or without a solution , should not constitute an obstacle to Turkey’s EU accession process. Cyprus should not be an issue regarding Turkey’s EU aspirations”.

Further to the above, another State Department official, Daniel Fried, in the presence also of his colleague Mathew Bryza, briefed an audience of prominent  Greek Americans (including journalists) in Washington on June 12, 2003. Inter alia he said the following about US policy that speaks by itself: “When we were trying to persuade Turkey to allow the passage of our troops through its territory into Nothern Iraq, we offered Turkey two incentives, several billion dollars in grants and loans and Cyprus in the form of the Annan Plan”. Cf. also Alex Efthyvoulos, “Contentious  Fried statement backing Turkey confirmed,” The Cyprus Weekly, August 5-11, 2005, p.52. Judy Dempsey of the Financial Times (“Europe and America:  West’s top guns attempt to  clinch Cyprus deal”, February  26, 2003) had this to say on the eve of the Iraq war about the role of the US in tilting the Annan Plan towards Turkey: “Senior members of the Bush administration  have suggested an improved deal on the UN package for northern Cyprus in return for Turkey’s co-operation in providing bases  and logistics for any US  - led war  against Iraq.” Finally concerning the wheeling and dealing between Washington and Ankara in preparation for the Iraq war, Timothy Noah writes: “in securing agreement to move US troops through Turkey for an Iraqi invasion, the US government has agreed to pay a bribe of up to $30 billion and has made certain bargains (with Ankara) it isn’t eager to spell out.” (The State, March 3, 2003).

[2] Cf. the essays in “Where is the international community?” Foreign Policy September / October 2002, pp 28-46.

[3] Cf. Denis Magalachvili, “Kosovo, a  Critique of a Failed Mission“, Mediterranean Quarterly, Vol.16, No.3 (Summer 2005) pp.118-141.