WOMEN IN CYPRUS DO NOT SUPPORT THEIR MEN

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30395, 20 March 1964, Page 11

WOMEN IN CYPRUS DO NOT SUPPORT THEIR MEN

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) NICOSIA, March 19. The men of Cyprus are up in arms but their women are down on the whole thing, the Associated Press says.

, . “If the women had to make a decision about Cyprus today they would tell everyone to go away,” said Mrs Stella Soulioti, Minister of Justice in President Makarios’s Government.

The 44-year-old attorney dispelled the idea Cypriot women are loading rifles for their men to shoot on either the Greek or Turkish side of the divided island. The women of Cyprus abhor the uprooting, violence and insecurity attending the civil conflict, the Justice Minister emphasised in an interview.

What they want is peace •nd the chance of carrying on producing families, protecting their homes and their men, she said.

They thought they were voting for that four years ago when they cast a democratic ballot for the first time in history. “There was no tradition of voting and there still is none in such a short time,” said Mrs Soulioto. But they “voted influences are removed.” The Minister is militant in

her view that Greek and Turkish Cypriots can live together but "only if outside influences are removed. Diplomatically, she avoided defining those influences as the Governments of Turkey and Greece but that was fairly definite what she meant, the news agency commented.

Her doctor husband is an ardent Greek sympathiser and contends volubly the only lasting solution would be a type of union with Greece with a Cypriot Government owing allegiance to the crown of Athens rather on the pattern of the set-up in present-day Northern Ireland.

Dr. and Mrs Soulioti do not see eye to eye on this question and that leads to some lively conversations, Associated Press says. Fighting broke out early today at the small Turkish Cypriot village of Ghaziveran, 40 miles west of Nicosia, a British officer reported. Mortars were being used, he said.

The clash began at 5.45 a.m. and was still in progress more than 90 minutes later.