PRESIDENT Demetris Christofias said yesterday the completion of the File of Cyprus was long overdue, as he was handed a copy of the report during a ceremony at the Presidential Palace.
The copy was presented to Christofias by EDEK MP Marinos Sizopoulos, who chaired a special parliamentary committee charged with drafting the report.
“At long last, after so many years, this is a necessity for the country, and I hope that this material is made use of in the proper way,” Christofias said at the ceremony.
The File covers the period 1967 to 1974 and the events leading up to the coup against Makarios, and the Turkish invasion.
Work on the File began five years ago. The final draft was approved by the plenum on March 17, but not before politicians bickered over its scope and content. Today a copy will be presented to the Archbishop.
In compiling the report, the parliamentary committee convened around 200 sessions, gathering testimonies from 150 people. The final draft numbers over 350,000 pages, which includes material from some 150,000 documents, personal statements, bibliography and press clippings in digitized format from the period in question.
Conventional wisdom here has it that the disaster of 1974 was a direct result of the actions of the Greek junta which attempted to overthrow Makarios, paving the way for the subsequent Turkish invasion days later.
At least two London-based Greek researchers have produced critiques of the File. Both slam the File as biased and as geared at putting all the blame on Greece.
Researcher Leonidas Leonidou remarks for example that the report hardly takes into account actions and omissions by the Greek Cypriot leadership and Makarios, and notes that the report’s authors seem to be “obsessed” with the conspiracy theory that Greece, Turkey and NATO plotted to partition Cyprus.
He notes also that the report “fails to cite the fact that most conflicts in Cyprus originated in the abandonment of the struggle for Enosis [union with Greece] for the sake of Independence.”
Whatever its shortcomings, the report has not been released into the public domain. A resolution by the House noted that the report would be made available to historians and the public, in a manner the Committee would decide on at a further date.
A separate File on Cyprus was completed in Greece years earlier, and is being held in safekeeping by the Hellenic Parliament. Official requests from the Cypriot parliamentary committee for access to that material had been denied by both the government and parliament of Greece, primarily on the grounds that the material includes classified documents.
