Irrationality in Flower

The problem of Cyprus, where Greek and Turkish communities have been indulging in mutual slaughter, this week headed for the Security Council of the United Nations. The island's President, Archbishop Makarios, should certainly be a happy man, for that was where he has wanted the problem all along.

Bearded Ecclesiastic. Nearly everyone else concerned with Cyprus disagreed. U.S. Under Secretary of State George Ball made cautionary stops last week at London, Athens and Ankara. Then, armed with the backing of all three governments as well as his own, he flew on to Cyprus to urge the acceptance of a proposal which would provide the island nation with a 10,000-man peacemaking force, drawn from troops of the West, to keep Cypriots from cutting each other's throats.

At the honey-colored presidential palace atop a hill overlooking the capital city of Nicosia, Ball argued for three days with Makarios, a bearded ecclesiastic who might have stepped into the present day from an llth century Byzantine mosaic. Ball quoted chapter and verse to Makarios, showing that the U.N. in previous actions has usually favored the maintenance of the status quo and has repeatedly approved partition as a solution to communal disputes--a solution abhorrent to Makarios and the Greek Cypriots. Throughout the negotiations, Makarios would nod sagely as if agreeing with every point Ball raised. Then he would beatifically repeat that the Cyprus problem should go to the U.N.

Ball's arguments should have been strongly reinforced by events inside and outside of Cyprus. At Limassol, the island's second largest city, Cypriot irrationality achieved its newest flowering.

The trouble started at the nearby village of Episkopi, one of the few still sheltering a mixed population of Greek and Turkish Cypriots. According to Greek sources, a Turkish police sergeant in charge of a four-man detail relieved his two Greek cops of duty and then phoned headquarters in Limassol to say he was no longer taking orders from the Greek Cypriot chief of police.

Electoral Paralysis. The Greek response was to start shooting at the police station. Fighting swiftly spread to Limassol itself (pop. 31,000 Greeks, 6,000 Turks), and some 50 persons were killed or wounded in a series of fire fights for such strongpoints as a local brewery and the 12th century castle where England's Richard the Lion-Hearted married Berengaria of Navarre. British troops from the adjacent Akrotiri airfield finally separated the antagonists and won agreement to a ceasefire. But then the Greek Cypriots, supported by two homemade tanks, launched a dawn assault on the Turkish quarter.

The sky was darkening outside Cyprus as well. Turkey, furious at the slaughter of its outnumbered (4 to 1) compatriots, rushed an army division to the seaport of Iskenderun, only 125 miles from Cyprus, assembled naval units for what was described as "maneuvers." Greece, which could ordinarily be expected to counter any Turkish move, was preoccupied with a national election.

Russian Option. Special Envoy Ball, finally and flatly rebuffed by Makarios, grimly left the island, stopping off in Turkey and Greece to urge calm and caution on both governments. Aware that Cyprus was going to the U.N., Britain and the U.S. activated their last-ditch plan. London, about an hour ahead of Cyprus, requested an "early meeting" of the Security Council to deal with the "dangerous situation" posed by the fratricidal fighting. The British move was strictly procedural, and its aim was to get before the forum of the world the Anglo-American conviction that first things should come first, even in Cyprus. Britain will propose to the Security Council what Ball had been proposing in Nicosia: the establishment of a 10,000-man peacekeeping force.

But shifting the crisis to the U.N. would give leverage to the Soviet Union, which can spoil any project the West pursues. At its own option, Russia can veto the Anglo-American proposal, thereby inviting a Turkish invasion of the island as the only means of rescuing Turkish Cypriots, or it can agree to the establishment of the force if it includes Communist troops, thus moving toward the historic Russian ambition of gaining a foothold in the Mediterranean.

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