Turkey demands decision

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33612, 14 August 1974, Page 15

Turkey demands decision

(N Z P A -Reuter—Copyright) GENEVA, August 13. The Cyprus peace conference today faces a demand from the Turkish Foreign Minister (Mr Gunes) that Greece and the Greek Cypriots should decide on Turkey’s proposals for the island’s constitutional future or risk a breakdown of the talks. Nir Gunes said last night that the conference would end today if the Greek Foreign Minister (Mr Mavros) and the Cypriot President, Mr Glafkos Clerides, did not take a decision on his plan, based on a cantonal-type federal system for Cyprus. Mr Clerides, however, worked at his hotel until the early hours of this morning on counter-proposals which Mr Mavros said varied considerably from those of Mr Gunes.

The Cypriot President’s ideas will be submitted today to the British Foreign Secretary (Mr James Callaghan), who persuaded Mr Gunes in a 30-minute meeting last night not to leave the conference without a settlement having been reached. Mr Callaghan received help, at a crucial point of a day of high diplomatic drama, from the United States Secretant of State (Dr Henry Kissinger), conference sources said.

The sources said that the British Foreign Secretaiy spoke three times on the transatlantic telephone line to Dr Kissinger who then communicated with the Turkish Prime Minister (Mr Bulent Ecevit) and bought another 24 hours of precious time.

(In the Turkish capital today, Mr Ecevit said that Greece had 24 hours to accept Turkish proposals for the constitutional future of Cyprus.)

Mr Mavros said that he was not optimistic about the chances of the talks, now in a tense part of their second stage. Britain, Greece, and Turkey are taking part in the conference as guarantors of a 1960 treaty which gave the Mediterranean island its freedom from British colonial rule.

Mr Callaghan, looking tired after what he said was his twenty-third meeting of the day, agreed with a reporter as he left the conference building early today that the talks had not broken down but had made very little progress.

At a midnight press conference Mr Gunes said that Turkey insisted that this stage of the conference should delineate one area

I which would be the principal zone under Turkish Cypriot administration in a Federal system. The Turkish Foreign Minister earlier withdrew a demand for a single administrative area for the island’s 110,000-strong Turkish minority — outnumbered four to one by ethnic Greeks — and substituted a plan which would provide for a number of Turkish districts or cantons. Asked whether he accepted Mr Gunes’s demands to have the main Turkish Cypriot area demarcated immediately, Mr Mavros answered: “I do not think so.” “It is too early to say how things will go out but I am not really optimistic,” he commented.

I The Greek Foreign Minis- : ter said that he understood I Turkey wanted about 35 per cent of Cypriot territory to be under Turkish Cypriot • administration. “To have 35 per cent of : the land for 18 per cent of the population is impossible,” i Mr Mavros added. ' GreeK armour was deployed 1 along the frontier with ' Turkey today as the nation ' maintained a war alert against a background of stalemate at the Geneva 1 Cyprus peace talks. The War Council met yes--1 terday for the second time ! in 24 hours and observers said that Greece might be planning to send forces to Cyprus, citing Turkey’s July 20 invasion as a precedent. Greece also wants to strengthen its military position in the Aegean islands along the Anatolian coast to offset the Turkish armed presence in Cyprus, observers said.