Fire & Smoke

The British army called it "Operation Lucky Alphonso," but few recent military operations have been less fortunate. In the first place, the 5,000 crack troops combing out the 65 square miles of Cyprus' rugged Troodos Mountains were not quite sure what they were looking for. Intelligence officers had a dog-eared snapshot of a square-shouldered man wearing a beret and with a .45 automatic slung from his Sam Browne belt, and they said it was the likeness of 58-year-old Greek Colonel George Grivas. But was this actually the legendary Dighenis, the man who fought both Nazis and Communists, is now leading the Cypriot revolt against the British? And if so, was he really holed up in the Troodos Mountains?

For nine days the sunburned soldiers dragged through the precipitous valleys and pine-covered mountain slopes, and then, as the area narrowed down, the fugitive Grivas (if indeed it was he) began to take refuge behind brush fires. Suddenly, with a change of wind, the whole area of pine forest took flame, engulfed a platoon of British soldiers.

Sentiments & Sacrifice. Operation Lucky Alphonso was conceived as a means of strengthening the British hand in a resumption of negotiations with the Cypriot nationalists. The tip-off that the Cypriots were ready to talk had come in a letter from Archbishop Makarios to British Labor M.P. Francis Noel-Baker. Speaking of Cyprus Governor Sir John Harding's "pointless decision to exile me," Makarios wrote: "I shall bear no grudge on account of this action. It is possible that the talks will be resumed at the point where they were broken off. But in that case, why the sacrifice of so many human beings, both British and Cypriot? For the sake of prestige, pride and obstinacy? None of these sentiments is worth the sacrifice of even a single human being." At week's end, counting their casualties in Operation Lucky Alphonso (21 dead, 15 badly burned), the British were ready to seek a way out.

Last March, negotiations broke down on Makarios' insistence that he should hand-pick the Greek majority in the Provisional Assembly, and on his demand for an amnesty for all Cypriot terrorists. The real issue was control of the island's security. The British feared that a hostile government in command of the island's police and defense services might act to weaken, even make untenable, their huge military base, intended for the protection of British oil interests in the Middle East.

Unofficially invited to London last fortnight to feel out the atmosphere, Nikos Kranidiotis, secretary of the Ethnarchy Council (the governing body of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus) and right-hand man of Makarios, said: "There may be a better chance here than in the fever of Cyprus." The British, he felt, might now be ready to agree to a Greek majority among elected members of the legislature. In return, the Archbishop would probably compromise on the width and tenure of the security measures to be had by the British, might come to terms over the release of prisoners, and might no longer insist on a time limit for self-determination. If agreement could be reached on these points, Archbishop Makarios would immediately appeal to the terrorists to call off the violence--and, said Kranidiotis, he would be obeyed. Asked why the peace-loving Archbishop had not done this earlier, Kranidiotis explained that, as the elected representative of the Cypriot people, the Archbishop had been bound to heed their inclinations, which were in "the Greek heroic tradition."

The Turkish Snag. Although this view seemed to confirm the British charge that the Archbishop was intimately connected with Cypriot terrorist activity, and despite misgivings about the Archbishop's reasons for not demanding a definite date for self-determination (thus giving him the opportunity to raise the issue whenever he wished), the British were in a mood to go ahead with a new offer to the Cypriots. There remained one more snag--Turkey.

The Turks welcome British control of Cyprus because the base also protects Turkey, and because they, as co-partners in the Baghdad Pact, see eye to eye with British policy in the Middle East. They have said that they will not tolerate control of Cyprus by Greece, a country which they fear might, at some change of government, easily become neutralist. Cyprus is only 40 miles from the Turkish mainland, and governs the southern approaches to that country. A neutralist Cyprus would compel the Turks to reorient their whole defense.

A tripod of interests must be satisfied. A guaranteed continuance of the British military base, on an island free in time to determine its own political future--would that satisfy Turk, Greek and Briton? Last week the British announced that General Sir Gerald Templer, chief of the Imperial General Staff, would shortly confer with Turkish Premier Menderes. Everybody at least seemed to be trying.

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