The Diplomatic Jockeys

CYPRUS

All last week, representatives of the eleven-nation U.N. Security Council filed in and out of U Thant's office, 38 stories above Manhattan's East River.

As they emerged from their private talks with the Secretary-General, word spread through the slab-sided building that all parties were at least somewhat closer to agreement on a solution to the complex Cyprus problem.

It was an encouraging end to a week that had started tensely in the Security Council. There, in two successive meetings, delegates made predictable speeches--U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and Britain's Sir Patrick Dean calling for swift establishment of a peacekeeping force on the turbulent island, while Russia's Nikolai Fedorenko depicted Cyprus as the innocent victim of a dastardly NATO plot, and Greece's Dimitri Bitsios argued that the island's "very existence" was threatened by invasion from Turkey.

Guarded Optimism. Then the Council adjourned for behind-the-scenes political jockeying masterminded by Secretary-General U Thant. What seemed to be emerging was a projected international peacekeeping force, under the U.N. umbrella but with a British command.

The estimated 10,000 troops needed may come from such countries as Canada, Ireland and Sweden, with their governments footing the bill. An "advisory group," drawn possibly from Brazil, Morocco and Norway, will supervise the peacekeeping work, and a "neutral mediator," as yet unchosen, will be charged with getting the Greek and Turkish Cypriots to work out a solution within a three-month period.

There remain, of course, many stumbling blocks. Russia was insisting that all eleven members of the Security Council have a hand in the advisory group, and Cyprus' President Makarios grumbled that his tiny nation had room for only 7,000 foreign troops--even though an estimated 30,000 Greek Cypriots are under arms. But at least the diplomatic atmosphere had changed from blackest pessimism to guarded hope.

Familiar Target. It was high time a decision was reached. Greece has just come through its second national elections in four months, and Turkey last week was stunned when a politically disaffected gunman fired three shots point-blank at Premier Ismet Inonu but missed. On Cyprus the British troops, who have been desperately trying to prevent Cypriots from slaughtering one another, were reinforced by 1,500 men, bringing the garrison to a total of 7,000.

Urgent cables from Nicosia warned that even this many troops were having a hard time keeping the peace.

The British wearily intervened at Ayios Theodores, near Limassol, and at Kokkina, on the coast, to break up skirmishes between partisan bands of Cypriots. As his armored car backed around tight hairpin turns high above the green-black sea pounding the rocks below, with Bren guns sounding from the ridge above him, a British major grunted: "Bloody mess, this is." Each new dispatch reported more ambushes on the highways, food shortages in the isolated Turkish Cypriot villages, and new landings of guns and munitions along the coast. Most ominous of all was the news that the Cypriot terrorists were reverting to their old habit of shooting not only at one another but also at British soldiers, who were a hated target during the four-year struggle for freedom.

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