DEBATE AT U.N.

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28457, 11 December 1957, Page 15

DEBATE AT U.N.

Charge Made By Soviet (Rec. 11 p.m.) NEW YORK, December 9. The United States wanted to use Cyprus as an advance rocket and missile base treatening the Middle East, the Soviet delegate, Mr Y. V. Pieve, told the Political Committee of the United Nations today. He said there could be no solution until all foreign trqops and bases were removed from Cyprus and its people given the right to choose their own political future. The debate was adjourned until after the General Assembly’s debate on the Algerian question starting tomorrow. Britain was ready to discuss with Greece and Turkey any solution for the Cyprus question, and she would give sympathetic consideration to any proposal which commended itself to both the Greek and Turkish Governments. Commander Allan Noble, the British delegate, told the committee. Opening the committee’s debate on Cyprus, the British delegate said: “We want to enter into discussions with them to see whether. with equal goodwill on both sides, an agreement can be found. We have the welfare of the peonies of Cyprus deeply at heart.

“We are most anxious to settle the dispute so as to restore the long friendship which is the natural state of relations between our three countries. We are also anxious lest -the continuance of this dispute should impair the stability of the area. “We have strategic responsibilities in Cyprus which must be safeguarded effectively in any future arrangement.” Commander Noble said.

Summing up Britain’s position, he said she had long been trying to move towards self-govern-ment in the island, but the Cyprus question was not a straightforward colonial problem of the kind found in other parts of the world. Britain had accented the findings of Lord Radcliffe, who had made an independent study of a constitution for Cyprus This scheme provided for a democratically elected assembly with a Greek Cypriot majority and a government which would have the confidence of the