Death at High Noon

CYPRUS Death at High Noon One sunny morning last week, a Land-Rover carrying seven Greek Cypriots bounced up the road to the tiny village of Ayios Sozomenos. Though only twelve miles distant from the capital city of Nicosia, the village is centuries away in time. To reach it, one travels four miles along a rutted road off the main asphalt highway and then some two miles over goat trails before the cluster of tile-roofed houses is dis covered crowded between a dry watercourse and a steep mesa of grey rock.

The Greeks say the men in the Land-Rover had intended to turn on a water pump that serves a nearby town, but were ambushed by Turkish Cypriots hidden in the dry riverbed. The Turks charge that the men in the Land-Rover opened fire on the village shepherds, who replied with their shotguns. With two dead and two wounded, the Land-Rover raced out of range, called for help. Greek Cypriots, armed with a variety of weapons, poured from neighboring villages. By noon they had surrounded Ayios Sozomenos and begun a battle that raged for five hours. At last, British troops, assigned the nearly impossible task of keeping the peace between the island's 500,000 Greek and 100,000 Turkish Cypriots, arrived in sufficient force to compel a ceasefire.

Pitchfork Charge. TIME Correspondent Robert Ball watched the fighting from a nearby hillside, then entered the village to see the grisly results. His report: "The bitterest fighting was at the western edge of the village, where the attacking Greeks had the cover of gnarled olive trees. In one mud-brick hut, where nine Turks had taken refuge, a window was blasted by a bazooka-type rocket, and the second floor literally sieved with bullet holes. In desperation, one Turkish shepherd tried to flee to the riverbed, but was cut down a few feet from the door. Another grabbed a pitchfork, made a futile, one-man assault on the Greek position, and was mowed down at once.

"Altogether the Turks lost seven dead and several wounded, but they gave a good account of themselves with their shotguns, killing a total of six of the better-armed Greeks and wounding eleven. Next morning a band of 50 armed Turkish Cypriots arrived to escort the 200 survivors of Ayios Sozomenos to the nearest Turkish strongpoint at Louroujina, four miles away. As the villagers moved silently off with their flocks of sheep and few cattle, one member of the Turkish rescue column pleaded with a British lieutenant, 'Please take the dead to Louroujina. We came to save the living. If you do not take the dead, they will be eaten by dogs.' "

Message from Nikita. The bitter fighting at Ayios Sozomenos symbolized the explosive nature of the Cyprus problem. Desperately, with a force of only 2,700 men, the British hoped to keep the peace until reinforcements arrived in the form of U.S. and other NATO forces. At least 10,000 soldiers would be necessary for the job. But Cyprus' Greeks had terrifying visions of a NATO plot to impose a political solution on terms favorable to the Turkish Cypriots. So Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus, accepted the idea of a peacekeeping force only on condition that it be under the U.N. Security Council.

The idea of a U.N. force is distinctly unpalatable to the British and the U.S., since it might bring Communist troops onto the scene. Nikita Khrushchev predictably shouldered his way into the delicate maneuvering, addressing an identical note to the U.S., Britain, France, Greece and Turkey in which he complained that "certain powers, trampling on the U.N. Charter and the generally accepted norms of international law, are trying to impose on Cyprus a settlement of problems that concern no one but the Cypriots."

Khrushchev was getting yeoman's help in the Cypriot capital of Nicosia, where the agitated Greek community was already crying "Kato NATO [Down with NATO]." Still surrounded by the three miles of encircling walls built in the 16th century when Venice ruled the island, Nicosia retains the appearance of a medieval town. The moat is now dry and used mainly for parades and religious processions, but the city's eleven projecting bastions are in good repair and can still offer riflemen, as they did archers, three good angles of fire against any attackers.

In Nicosia last week, two homemade bombs exploded outside the U.S. embassy, injuring a marine and shattering windows. U.S. Ambassador Fraser Wilkins raced to the Presidential Palace, but on the way missed Archbishop Makarios, who was hurrying to the U.S. embassy. Makarios called the bombing a "crime of the most revolting nature." Nevertheless, since Makarios' government seemed unable to guarantee their safety, half of the 1,200 U.S. dependents on the island were flown to Lebanon. At week's end, the U.S. dispatched a diplomatic team headed by Undersecretary of State George Ball to London, for urgent talks with British officials on the Cyprus crisis.

Dwindling Villages. It will take gifted diplomacy to put Cyprus back together again. As clash follows clash between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the island, which is three-fourths the size of Connecticut, tends to become two countries instead of one, with two rival administrations, two police forces and two unmanageable rival armies. Originally there were 106 villages where Greeks and Turks lived together in peace if not in amity. Only 23 remain. From the others, Greeks and Turks--most often Turks--have fled to join their compatriots elsewhere. Last week the Turkish flag flew over much of northern Cyprus from the seaport of Famagusta to the Turkish town of Lefka (see map). Throughout most of the rest of the island, Greeks are in control.

In Nicosia, the British soldiers have drawn a "Green Line" (socalled from the color of the marking used on the military maps), which follows the route of Paphos and Hermes streets. North of the Green Line, behind sandbags and fortified houses, huddles the Turkish community; south, behind identical sandbags and barbed wire, are the Greeks. British patrols try to keep apart the gun-toting partisans of each side.

The atmosphere of insecurity and mutual hatred makes an armistice unlikely. Both sides are heavily armed, partly through the periodic rotation of army units from Greece and Turkey: arriving units carry sidearms, departing units return unarmed, having left their weapons behind with their island partisans. Hence the melancholy jokes about the "overkill capacity" of both sides. One tired and disenchanted British officer commented: "What this island really needs is a disarmament conference."

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