By Kosta St. Pavlowitch
IN HIS zeal for re-election last February, President Glafcos Clerides made a string of pledges, hostages to fortune that would return to haunt him as the year wore by.
Cornered in a race too close to call, the incumbent pulled out all the stops, appealing to the electorate at what he insisted was a crucial stage in the national issue.
Clerides was the figure of continuity, the man on whose re-election the Americans were counting to launch their ‘big push’ and who would steer Cyprus towards membership of the European Union. Most importantly, he was the man in whose hands our defence was safe, who pledged again and again the deployment of the best anti-aircraft system that money could buy.
But as the year comes to a close, that missile system is heading, not for Paphos, but for Crete. America’s big push is still to materialise: trouble- shooter Richard Holbrooke came once, came twice, and went off in search of success in Kosovo.
Cyprus settlement talks are at a complete standstill, with Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash refusing to return to the table until his statelet gains full international recognition.
Only on the European front can the government boast progress – harmonisation gathers speed, economic indicators are favourable and European officials heap lavish praise on Cyprus’ performance.
But politically, problems lie ahead, with member states waking up to the real dangers of importing the Cyprus Problem into the Union.
So why has Clerides failed so singularly to deliver? In part, because his promises were so unrealistic.
Denktash had walked out of settlement talks and suspended all bi-communal activities just months earlier in protest at the EU’s decision to open accession talks with the Republic. There was nothing in February to indicate that he would return.
And far from returning to the talks, 1998 has seen the Turkish side increasingly distance itself from efforts to reunite the island in a bi- communal federation. An American initiative did indeed materialise in the spring, but Washington never had the will to force Turkey to make concessions.
Holbrooke did come twice, in March and in May, but he duly left without having achieved anything more than the inauguration of a bi-communal telephone exchange. He has not returned since.
Bitter at the EU’s decision to open the door to Cyprus while shutting it on Turkey, Denktash told Holbrooke he wanted international recognition of his ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’ and suspension of Cyprus’ EU membership bid before he would return to the negotiating table.
And the United States – itself piqued at Brussels’ snub of its Turkish Nato ally – was unwilling to pressure Denktash and Ankara to change their stance.
Those who expected a Dayton miracle from Holbrooke forgot that America’s hard man had been able to call on massive Nato air strikes to cow recalcitrant Balkan negotiators into submission.
Nothing of the sort was ever likely to happen in Cyprus.
Instead, as the summer approached, the heat turned onto the government of President Clerides. At the heart of the problem lay the government’s 1997 decision to order from Russia four batteries of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, initially due for deployment in August. The missiles would serve as a vital boost to the island’s air defences, protecting the new Paphos air base and acting as a serious deterrent against any Turkish strikes. Each of the four batteries would have 12 missiles, with a range of 150 kilometres – therefore capable of shooting down planes as they took off from bases in mainland Turkey.
From the moment the order was placed two years ago, the government began setting conditions for its cancellation, making clear it was a tactical move to raise international interest in Cyprus and force Turkey to make concessions.
This policy was a gross miscalculation. In Ankara, politicians and generals queued up to threaten military action if ever the missiles were deployed in Cyprus.
Turkey would not play Clerides’ game, making it an issue of principle to refuse any concession that might allow the government to back down with any modicum of dignity. Cyprus would either have to accept a humiliating capitulation or face air strikes that would wreck its defence and its economy.
The reply from Greece was bullish: it invoked the Joint Defence Dogma to warn that any Turkish attack against the missiles would constitute a casus belli. Matters were threatening to spiral out of control.
On June 16, Greek fighter jets flew in to the newly-opened Paphos airbase sparking an unprecedented rise in military tension. Turkish jets screamed into occupied Lefkoniko before the week was out, while a flotilla of warships docked in occupied ports. Rhetoric reached fever pitch and the presidents of the two rival motherlands, Costis Stephanopoulos and Suleiman Demirel, flew in for morale-boosting visits.
US envoy Thomas Miller warned things would get worse in Cyprus before they got better, and the Sunday Times reported that the Ministry of Defence in London was planning massive evacuation plans in case war broke out over the missiles, due for delivery at the peak of the summer tourist season.
International attention had turned to Cyprus, but not for the right reasons. The focus of diplomacy was on securing an urgent cancellation of the missile deal, not a solution of the Cyprus problem.
The Cyprus government agreed to one postponement of the missiles after another – from August to October, to November to the end of the year.
It was irrelevant. For the Turkish threat remained, and the international community – the Americans in particular – had one priority that overrode all other concerns: to avoid war on the southern flank of Nato. To that end, it was always going to be easier to pressure Cyprus than allied Turkey, especially when it appeared that Cyprus had provoked the crisis by stepping up the arms race.
Politicians in Cyprus began to realise that the missile policy was counter- productive: the Cyprus problem had become a missile problem. The world had forgotten about invasion and occupation to focus on military tension. And Denktash exploited that shift to its maximum potential.
This was the year when Denktash moved the goalposts, possibly for good. He was no longer willing to talk federation, he declared, only confederation between two sovereign states. Talks could only resume once the ‘TRNC’ had secured full international recognition.
Effectively, he would only be willing to discuss the details of partition. Let’s be good neighbours, he suggested, sign a non-aggression pact, set up a register for the exchange of properties.
These were all radical suggestions, going against both the spirit and the letter of the UN Secretary-general’s efforts to secure reunification in a bi-communal, bi-zonal federation. But they scarcely raised an eyebrow among an international community too busy worrying about the prospect of war in the eastern Mediterranean.
The tension also gave ammunition to those European states concerned about the wisdom of admitting a divided Cyprus into the Union. Would it really be wise to extend the borders of the EU into a potential war zone?
Diplomats began to suggest that the missiles were seriously damaging Cyprus’ EU accession prospects, ruining the good economic work done to align Cyprus with the Maastricht criteria and the acquis communautaire. Last month, the governments of France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands issued an official communiqué saying the accession of a divided Cyprus would pose “fundamental problems” to the Union.
Greece managed to steer away the danger by threatening a veto of EU expansion if Cyprus’ path was blocked; but alarm bells had begun to ring in Athens.
The government of Costas Simitis had staked everything on overcoming Greece’s image as the bad boy of Europe, braving massive domestic opposition to steer Greece into Economic and Monetary Union by the year 2000. What he did not need was a bruising battle with his European partners over Cyprus and the prospect of a ruinous, open-ended military conflict with Turkey.
While the government in Cyprus continued to insist the missiles would come, the Athens press began to suggest otherwise, raising the possibility of a compromise deployment in Crete.
Sensing a climbdown might be imminent, the Americans last month dispatched Holbrooke’s side-kick Thomas Miller to the region, while behind-the-scenes negotiations were under way in New York for Security Council resolutions that might offer crumbs of comfort to a Cyprus government apparently desperate for a way out.
Clerides went back and forth to Athens, convened the National Council on Christmas Eve, and yesterday finally admitted the inevitable – the missiles would go to Crete.
The brash victory celebrations of February 15 are a distant memory and the President’s credibility is in tatters. His government has continually lowered the threshold for cancellation, from full demilitarisation, to the prospect of demilitarisation, to a no-fly zone – to cite but a few. Now a vague UN resolution about reducing tension and empty statements from President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair seem to be enough.
Clerides’ socialist coalition partners now look destined to quit the government, and calls for his resignation are being heard.
The missiles will never come, and a solution to the Cyprus problem seems further away than ever.
Far from direct talks on the substance of the national issue, the UN is back to square one, with a new round of shuttle talks, proximity talks, talks about talks with the aim of reducing immediate tensions.
At best, the year has been wasted; at worst it may end up as a landmark on the road to partition.
