Peacekeeping forces – unlike diamonds – are not for ever
THE ISSUE of the United Nations Peace keeping Force in Cyprus arose recently. For how long will the Force stay here? Could it stay for as long as the problem lasts?
And if the Security Council reaches the firm conclusion that the pursuits of the Greek or Turkish Cypriots are not within the ambit of what the Council would consider as a historic settlement, will it keep its Peace Force in Cyprus to watch the outcome of an endless theatre of the absurd and abandon other hotspots immersed in blood-drenched confrontations, which need supervision and salvation?
The Force was created by Security Council Resolution 186 (1964) for a period of three months, in order “to prevent a recurrence of fighting and contribute to the restoration of law and order”. Since then the mandate has been renewed almost 100 times.
It should be remembered that in case anyone of the Permanent Members of the Security Council (each one of them has a veto right) decides that “enough is enough with Cyprus” and does not accept the renewal, then the Force goes and we are left alone with God and our Destiny.
These Permanent members consist of “our evil demons the British” (Christofias’ dictum) the “wicked Americans whom God should banish from Cyprus” (Tassos Papadopoulos’ dictum), the French, the Russians and the Chinese, who unanimously with all other members of the Security Council tried in 2003, through resolution 1475 (2003), to impose on us “fraudulently” the “cursed” Annan Plan, which in accordance with the resolution “was a unique basis for further negotiation to reach a comprehensive settlement of the problem”.
So, all of them in the Security Council, the whole world for that matter, have been our enemies. But when we need them for the peacekeeping force, they become our angels.
In connection with the peacekeeping, force I recalled recently the incredible adventure we went through on June 15, 1978, when a war machine was set up in New York for Resolution 430 (1978), for the renewal of the force.
The session of the Security Council commenced at 9am of June 15 and ended at 5am the following day. It lasted for 20 hours and, as we were told, it was the longest Security Council session ever.
We were all there. As Foreign Minister, I led the Cyprus delegation. I had with me Ambassador Zenon Rossides, Ambassador George Papoulias (Greece), Cypriot diplomats – who became ambassadors in subsequent years – Andreas Jacovides, Charalambos Christophorou, Michael Sherifis, James Droussiotis, Erato Kozakou-Markoulli and also Akis Stephanides and others. On the other side of the fence Rauf Denktash led a large entourage of Turkish and Turkish Cypriot diplomats.
So, the marathon session started in the quest of an agreed resolution. I addressed the Security Council. We had dozens of meetings to no avail. We were all in the Delegates Lounge of the United Nations, us on one side, the Turkish Cypriots on the other. Late in the evening a number of spouses joined us, Mrs Denktash, my wife Lelia, Tereza Rossides, Pamela Jacovides, Mrs Papoulias, Ritsa Christophorou. They all followed the deliberations, which would not generate any results.
At midnight exactly, the United Nations admonished all of us that the mandate of the force had expired and that the force would be withdrawn. I was in a continuous telephone communication with President Kyprianou, who was following the events from Nicosia and who asked me to try and resolve the deadlock.
At that point some senior officials of the United Nations made a temporary arrangement, which had been used in the past as well. It is known as “Stop the clock”. So the clock of the UN was turned back, temporarily, to midnight and stopped.
We all knew that if the force were officially withdrawn into its own camp, the Turkish army might move menacingly into the neutral zone and elsewhere. Less than four years had elapsed since the invasion and the situation in Cyprus was quite fluid and unstable.
A number of Security Council members argued that peacekeeping must be followed by peacemaking within a reasonable timeframe. Peacekeepers have a very important mandate to implement, the preservation of world peace. No country can keep them for a very long time, even if she is prepared to foot the bill.
They are not mercenaries. They are mandated peacekeepers and there are many areas of bloody confrontation in the world where their services are badly needed. The fourteen years of peacekeeping in Cyprus were considered by many as too long a period. But 31 years later (total of 45 years) they are still here!
At about 2am in the morning of June 16, British ambassador Sir Ivor Richard and ambassador Jaipal of India presented to us a new draft resolution. We studied it and we said that we would agree in principle. Then they went to Rauf Denktash, who had the same reaction.
Waldheim was woken up and he returned to the UN headquarters. They used an auxiliary room, next to the Security Council main hall. They switched on the lights in one section of the room – it was semi-dark. Waldheim and his people on the one side, we on the other. Denktash would follow.
Waldheim was about to start, when our 86-year-old ambassador Zenon Rossides (one of the most important aides of Makarios) got up discreetly from where he was seated next to me, whilst everybody was curiously looking on. He walked to the semi-dark end of the room, sat down, opened his briefcase and took out a napkin and two grapefruits. He peeled the fruit, he ate it and he came back to his seat.
It was exactly 3am. At that time Zenon and Tereza Rossides woke up every night and ate two grapefruits each. It was part of a composite dietary protocol, which was sacrosanct for them.
The grapefruit brought us luck. Both Denktash and our side accepted the draft resolution. The members of the Security Council were reconvened (formally the Council was continuously in session). So at about 5am of June 16, Resolution 430 (1978) was adopted. A 20-hour day had come to an end. A new day had started for the Peace keeping force, with a tinge of grapefruit.
The moral: diamonds may be forever, as billionaire Harry Oppenheimer of the South African De Beers Company had been advertising since 1938, but Peace keepers are not forever. And we should neither be irritated nor talk about blackmail when some people speak the truth.
Of course, if we were prepared to accept the truth at the right time, if we were prepared to react positively to even just one of the 15 initiatives/plans proposed to us over the past 60 years, which we rejected (see my article of 30/1/2008), then we would not lose, probably forever, Morphou; we would not be left stranded with 250,000 Turkish settlers; we would not have thousands of illegal buildings erected on our properties; we would not have 40,000 Turkish soldiers on our territory. We would have Famagusta in our embrace, not in our daydreams. And we would not have a country broken up in two parts.
n Nicos Rolandis was Cyprus’ Foreign Minister from 1978-1983 and the Minister of Commerce, Industry & Tourism from 1998-2003
