New Hope for Unity in Cyprus

...What remains to be seen is whether the Greek and Turkish Cypriots can put aside the historic enmities and venomous stereotypes that have kept them and their island divided for so long...

...His uncle founded the GreekCypriot Communist Party in 1922, and two decades later his parents were among the organizers of its successor, the Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL...

...Auoustus Richard Norton, an associate professor of comparative politics at West Point and a frequent New Leader contributor, is currently writing a book on Cypriot politics...

...The Greek Cypriots have shown remarkable resilience: Fourteen years ago 40 per cent of them were uprooted from their homes, yet today their annual per capita income is $5,500, a third higher than in Greece...

...Skillful United Nations mediation kept the kilowatt clash from getting too nasty, and after a period of tension the Greek-Cypriot controlled constitutional government in Nicosia and the Turkish-Cypriot provisional government in Lefkosa-the Turkish name for the capital-acted to end the dispute...

...Any workable reunification scheme will require some difficult and unpopular concessions on the part of the Greek Cypriots, who constitute 82 per cent of the population...

...The issue is bound to remain a live one, given that the best achievable settlement to the Cyprus problem in the judgment of most observers is a bizonal federation headed by a sovereign central government...

...Few diplomats who have met him, however, believe he is a stalking horse for the Communists...

...In private, Vassiliou acknowledges that making those concessions could spell a hasty end to his political career...

...The two constituent units would enjoy considerable autonomy in administering communal affairs, and Nicosia would serve as an open capital...

...Instead of isolating the displaced Greek Cypriots in camps that would serve to foment rage and keep the issue of return boiling, the authorities decided to do everything they could to integrate them into the shrunken Republic of Cyprus...

...He insists that he is prepared to pay that price...

...Foremost among them is the looming hulk of Turkey...

...Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal and his Greek counterpart, Andreas Papandreou, had little to say about Cyprus in the public statement they issued at the conclusion of their remarkably genial meeting in January...

...Self-assured, gregarious, articulate, and smart as a whip, he has been active in Cypriot politics since the country gained its independence from Britain in 1960...

...In the context of such an arrangement, Vassiliou's position on the right of return is the same as that of the man he defeated, Glafkos Clerides...

...He now seems interested in the formula of a federal Cypriot state with Turkish-Cypriot and Greek-Cypriot components-an idea, by the way, that originally emerged over a decade ago in discussions between the late Archbishop Makarios and Denktash himself...

...The island is an important listening post, close to the sensitive trouble spots of the Middle East...

...Any proposed settlement that does not include the departure of the bulk of those troops-and the majority of the post-invasion Turkish settlers-will be a nonstarter...

...in the absence of encouragement, though, few Greek Cypriots would actually choose to exercise it (nor, presumably, would many of the 70,000 Turkish Cypriots who were displaced northward...

...Yet Cyprus is hardly irrelevant to Western interests...

...Vassiliou is also enough of a realist to appreciate that without the assent of Turkey, Cyprus will remain divided...

...Ankara's deployment of more than 30,000 troops in the North has enabled the Turkish Cypriots to control 38 per cent of the island, and the transplanting of as many as 60,000 settlers from Anatolia has further undergirded Turkey's influence...

...Most important, the determination of Ozal and Papandreou not to let improving relations between their two countries get bogged down over Cyprus signaled their willingness to have the island's division regarded as an international, not a Greco-Turkish problem...

...But Vassiliou probably was concerned about covering his flanks...

...That enlightened policy may now enable the new President to reach a settlement that would be impossible in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean...

...Because of its emotional salience, the right must be recognized in principle...

...The 3,600-square-mile island is a favored destination for legions of European vacationers, drawn by the sun, low-priced package tours and the genteel, scrupulous natives...

...As one veteran diplomat put it, "They didn' t ignore the illness altogether, they just decided to reduce the fever...

...Indeed, there were moments in the week preceding his election when he sounded a bit like his predecessor, Spiros Kyprianou, known for his deadening intransigence (and eliminated in the first round...

...The new President's name is a familiar one in Cyprus...

...The warming of Greco-Turkish relations, the reasonableness of George V. Vassiliou and the survival instincts of Rauf Denktash all argue that the time is ripe to move forward...

...Its bucolic capital houses a full complement of well-staffed embassies, including those of the United States, France, Libya, and the Soviet Union...

...The potential economic benefits that reunification holds for the Turkish Cypriots are therefore not to be sneezed at...

...Asked if he fears this, he revealingly replied, "But what is my alternative...

...The most memorable quip of the episode came from a Greek-Cypriot official who, noting that Turkish Cypriote have not paid for electricity since 1974, remarked, "We serve paying customers first...

...he would have to be quite an actor to have feigned the spirit of enlightened flexibility that was his campaign hallmark...

...Consequently, last month's election of an entrepreneur and political novice as President of the GreekCypriot South has raised hopes that progress toward a solution is finally possible...

...The Turkish-Cypriot leader has good reason for bending a bit, considering the risks that the status quo holds for him and his side...

...George V. Vassiliou assumed office on February 28, following a campaign in which he promised to press for unity talks with Turkish-Cypriot leaders...

...In 1981, 18 per cent of Cyprus' trade was with the EEC...

...AKEL ballots nevertheless accounted for as much as 60 per cent of Vassiliou's total share of the vote in his second-round victory over the veteran Right-wing politician Glafkos Clerides...

...Visitors number some 600,000 a year, approximating the local population of around 680,000...

...Tucked into the eastern Mediterranean, nearly within sight of Turkey and Lebanon, the Republic of Cyprus impresses the casual observer as a becalmed refuge in a region of political turbulence...

...The way is thus open for the United Nations to bring it to a resolution, and senior UN diplomats-not normally noted for their ebullience-are very upbeat about the opportunity...

...What does worry them is that Vassiliou -whose attractiveness as a candidate was largely the prospect he represented of a leadership untethered by old commitments and open to new ideas-might ultimately get sucked into the mundane fray of Greek-Cypriot politics...

...With Turkey in his corner, Denktash is in a strong negotiating position, a fact he knows and relishes...

...One of the most significant litmus tests of his sincerity will be his maintaining a pragmatic stance on the "right of return" claimed by the 200,000 Greek Cypriots displaced from the North by the partitioning of the island...

...Vassiliou credits his parents with giving him a strong social conscience, and he remembers with a mixture of sadness and pride how his father and mother left him to fend for himself as a student in Switzerland while they went off to assist the Communist rebels in Greece...

...Denktash is a charming raconteur whose magisterial girth not only betrays love for cooking and rich food but also gives him a physical presence that matches his political skills...

...If the Greek Cypriots are serious about reunifying the island, they will have to provide the alternative...

...the Greek-sponsored coup and the subsequent Turkish invasion in 1974-it is rare for this former British colony to receive news coverage two days running...

...It is not easy to justify the presence of 30,000 Turkish troops in the North, especially considering that the United Nations has deployed what is arguably its most successful peacekeeping force on the island...

...That does not mean the island was not discussed...

...Moreover, as the geopolitical hub of the Levant, it is very much in the ebb and flow of diplomacy...

...He has long argued, too, that the one guarantee of political equality for his people in a reunified state is a separate zone under TurkishCypriot administration...

...Still, of late Denktash's rhetoric has mellowed...

...Rather, he is likely to simply ask his TurkishCypriot interlocutors, "What do you want...

...That means dealing with the underlying anxieties, rational or not, of the Turkish Cypriots...

...Cyprus is a familiar base for foreign correspondents, but few of them write much about the affairs of the country itself...

...Diplomatic opportunities tend to be fleeting, as the past 14 years of missed chances in Cyprus illustrates...

...Across the green line the TurkishCypriot per capita annual income is $1,720...

...And as Glafkos Clerides observes, "We have given them cause to fear...

...To the delight of young native men, the island's beaches are magnets for young Scandinavian females, whose topless bathing preferences contrast sharply with the conservative mores of the Cypriots...

...Vassiliou's ability to ensure that recognition of a right of return would have little practical effect can be traced to the extraordinarily compassionate response of the Cypriot government to the refugees' predicament in 1975...

...The man sitting across the negotiating table from Vassiliou will be Rauf Denktash, the President of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus...

...Besides being the subject of a lingering dispute between Turkey and Greece-both members of NATO-it is of vital strategic importance and contains two sizable British military bases...

...Their chief fear is that the Hellenic majority will one day achieve enosis, or union with Greece...

...In fact, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus-declared in 1983 and recognized only by Ankara-would be completely isolated were it not for the Turkish communications and transportation networks that connect it to the mainland and thence to the rest of the world...

...Cyprus is the first country to turn an association agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC) into a customs union allowing for the exchange of almost all industrial and agricultural goods without tariffs, quotas or duties...

...With the exception of some major international incidents-e.g...

...POST-ELECTION FLEXIBILITY New Hope for Unity in Cyprus BY AUGUSTUS RICHARD NORTON Nicosia The most recent Cyprus crisis occurred in the summer of 1987 when power generating plants in the Greek-Cypriot South inflicted electricity shortages on the TurkishCypriot North...

...Businesslike and affable in manner, he is not the type to waste time haggling over who has been unjust to whom-a favorite pastime in Cyprus...

...today the figure is 3 5 per cent...

...Neither side has been willing to rise above its parochial interests for the purpose of reunification...

...The President says that he himself long ago made a "negative decision" about getting involved with the party...

...Denktash clearly enjoys being number one, and he is not enchanted by the very real possibility that Turkey might one day move in and swallow up his independence along with that of the Turkish Cypriots...

...That is 70 per cent higher than on the Turkish mainland, but less than a third of the Greek-Cypriot figure...

...The Greek Cypriots, despite their majority status, have apprehensions that must be dealt with as well...

...It would be hard to imagine the Turkish Cypriots having a more crafty, formidable or effective leader...

...United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuéllar-himself a former special envoy to Cyprus-is reportedly poised to take the initiative...

...He is quick to recall how the Turkish-Cypriot minority suffered prior to 1974 when the dominant Greek Cypriots were enjoying their "Golden Age...

...To date, the major impediment to settling the Cyprus partition has been the obduracy of the entrenched Greekand Turkish-Cypriot leaderships...

...In private conversations Vassiliou points out that although his father never actually repudiated AKEL, he lost his appetite for politics after a deeply disillusioning stint in Stalin's Soviet Union...