‘Deep rift’ on Cyprus issue

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32846, 21 February 1972, Page 13

‘Deep rift’ on Cyprus issue

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) ATHENS, February 19. The leaders of Greece’s two main political parties today said that there was a deep rift between Athens and Nicosia on the Cyprus issue and spoke of an “explosive situation.”

Mr Panayotis Kanellopulos, leader of the National Radical Union Party, sent a statement also signed by a former liberal minister, Mr loannis Zigdis, to foreign news agencies. Relations were strained last week when the Greek Government called for a national unity government to be formed in Cyprus and asked President Makarios to hand over recently-imported Czechoslovak arms to the United Nations peace-keep-ing force. The statement of the two political leaders — whose parties got more than 80 per cent of votes cast in the last Greek elections in 1964—said that no solution was possible in the Cyprus problem without the consent of the Cypriot people as expressed through their Government. Political parties are not permitted to function in Greece. The statement said: “The unconcealed attacks against the Cyprus Government by Athens, at a time when the resumption of talks between the two communities was imminent, has created an explosive situation which holds the Greek people in understandable and deep anxiety.” They said there was a “very deep rift to an extent that naked threats of intervention from Athens are launched, which are based on the Zurich and London treaties.” The Greek Foreign Undersecretary (Mr Constantine I

Panayotakos) said yesterday that in future if national interests dictated it Greece would exercise her right to intervene in Cyprus according to the agreements, which named Greece, Turkey and Britain as guarantors of the island’s independence. The Greek Deputy Foreign Minister (Mr Christian Xanthorpoulos-Palamas) said at a press conference today that Greece would tolerate no foreign intervention in the affairs of Cyprus.