Cyprus Constitution When Order Restored

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28133, 23 November 1956, Page 13

Cyprus Constitution When Order Restored

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, November 22.

The Colonial Secretary (Mr Lennox Boyd), making the British Governments latest statement on Cyprus in the House of Commons, said that the introduction .of a new constitution would have to wait until law and order were restored.

The opinion of the island’s population seems to be the reverse of this plan. Until this deadlock is resolved the people of Cyprus and the British forces there foresee nothing but the continuance of the killings, searchings, curfe'ws. executions and fines. Mr Constantine Karamanlis, the Greek Prime Minister, raised the Cyprus issue in the General Assembly of the United Nations last night and said that the United Nations was “powerless to impose a just solution displeasing to a great power.” Speaking in the Assembly’s general debate on world affairs, Mr Karamanlis said that between the ideals of the United Nations Charter and the reality of power politics “there is a vast discrepancy. "If Cyprus were occupied by a small country—a country the size of Greece —the United Nations would have no difficulty in solving the question," he asserted.

"No-one. not even the occupying power, contests the fact that the demand of the people of Cyprus to live in freedom is reasonable, moral and legitimate.” Mr Karamanlis said. "However, those who oppose the Greek recourse have unwittingly or wittingly woven a vOeb of confusion or misunderstanding around the issue. “It has been said that Greece was using the Cyprus question in a bid for territorial expansion,” Mr Karamanlis said. "As the responsible representative of Greece, I categorically reject

this allegation. Greece looks to no advantage whatsoever. “For Greece, the Cyprus question is noj an enterprise. It is a duty. The liberation of any people in bondage is the duty of every free nation. The people of Cyprus are a noble people, with a great past and a high civilisation.”

Three British soldiers were wounded in a terrorist ambush in south-west Cyprus today. The men were wounded when terrorists electrically detonated a bomb underneath two military trucks passing through Kissoussa village. 60 miles south-west of Nicosia.

Soldiers in the vehicles opened fire on three men seen running away. Mr John Miles, a British civilian, who was wounded by terrorists last Thursday, died in hospital this afternoon.

Another Englishman, who was with Mr Miles when the gunmen opened fire, Mr Alfred Hallam, was killed on the spot. Security forces today arrested 24 Cypriot civilians in a Greek monastery 20 miles south-west of Nicosia, following the discovery of 125 shot-gun cartridges there.

A special court in Nicosia today sentenced three Cypriot Greek youths to five years’ gaol each for carrying arms and ammunition last August. They had pleaded not guilty.