Mediating in Cyprus by Oliver P. Richmond

Author:Oliver P. Richmond [Richmond, Oliver P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Political Science
ISBN: 9781136319440
Google: 8wsblnVAtF4C
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-04-03T15:55:27+00:00

FIVE

A Reversal of Fortunes: The Two Communities' Views of UN Involvement in Peacemaking in Cyprus 1975–83

I know of no problem more frustrating or more bedevilled by mean-spiritedness and lack of mutual confidence, nor of a problem where all concerned would so easily gain from a reasonable settlement.1

It is vital to make real progress towards peace and to avoid a recurrence of fighting. Over the years we have succeeded in the latter task but failed in the former.2

INTRODUCTION

After the breakdown during the summer of 1974 the situation that emerged was mainly due to the fact that the Security Council acted as a brake on the Turkish troops amassed along the green line and also because of the Secretary-General's strategy of turning UNFICYP into an interpositionary force.3 This enabled the intercommunal discussions to begin soon after the fighting had stopped. Two distinct phases emerged during the period from 1975 to 1983. The first involved the emergence of a new situation and the enlivened attempts to bring the two side closer together. This phase tailed off with the death of Makarios in 1977 and, despite the second high-level agreement of 1979, the second phase, from 1980 to 1983, was characterized by increasing despondency and frustration as a result of a combination of the tendency of non-substantive issues to fog the thinking of the negotiators and calculated efforts to delay progress as both sides focused on relatively inflexible objectives.

After the fighting in 1974 the Security Council, in Resolution 367,4 called for the Secretary-General to undertake a new mission of good offices, which was rapidly to become viewed as the main hope for finding a way forward by the Greek Cypriot leadership. As a consequence of the struggle over the interpretation of the UN peacemaking mission, the tendency for there to be a blur between the actual UN mission of good offices and a mediatory role continued. This was illustrated by a perceived need on the part of the Secretary-General henceforth to support a federal solution to the Cyprus problem. But the UN was faced with a series of initial problems or attitudes which had tended to compromise peacemaking efforts in the period before 1974 and were carried over into the new situation. The initial problem was that:

'to attempt to mediate between the Greeks [Greek Cypriots] and the Turkish Cypriots over the reunification of Cyprus presupposes the normative value that unity is desirable, while it is at least conceivable that in the long run division and separation may lead to greater peace than unsuccessful attempts at integration.'5

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