CYPRUS: Hero's Return

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Through three bitter and often bloody years, Greek Cypriots had looked to the day when Archbishop Makarios, their spiritual and political leader, would return from exile. This week the day came, and Cyprus went wild with joy.

From coastal towns and mountain hamlets, 150,000 Greek Cypriots—more than one-fourth of the entire population of the island—walked, pedaled and bounced in decrepit buses into the capital of Nicosia (pop. 80,000). They clogged the narrow streets, clotted the tortuous alleys. "Makarios, Ma-ka-ri-os," they chanted as the black-robed archbishop rode in triumph beneath arches of myrtle and laurel in a cream-colored Mark VII Jaguar. This, declared Makarios, is "the resurrection of our country."

The man that the British had whisked out of Nicosia by plane on a March afternoon in 1956, to exile in the remote Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, had come home—as exiled leaders usually do —a hero.

But the jubilation seemed to be intended more for Makarios, the politician and primate, than for the London agreement (,'TIME. March 2) that will within the year turn the island from a British crown colony into an independent republic. In their whitewashed coffee shops Greek Cypriots frowned at Article 22 of the agreement, which forbids them ever again to demand enosis (union with Greece). "We shall have to hear about it from the mouth of Makarios," said one coffee drinker. "From him we shall learn if it is good."

Britain's respected Cyprus Governor Sir Hugh Foot (who previously guided both the Nigerians and Jamaicans on the road to independence) moved swiftly to reduce onerous restrictions, so that Makarios and Turkish Cypriot leaders would find it easier to sell the compromise plan to a doubting populace. Swallowing hard, the British proclaimed an amnesty that assures safe-conduct to Greece for Colonel George Grivas, wispy, 60-year-old leader of the Greek Cypriot terrorist underground organization EOKA, along "with anyone he may wish to take with him." The British also announced plans to cut their garrison from 25,000 to 5,000 men.

Peace on Cyprus had one important side effect. Sixty Greek officers and men who last June had walked out in a huff from NATO's Southeastern European Command headquarters at Izmir, Turkey, quietly returned to their job. Friendly allies once again in the Eastern Mediterranean, the British, Turks and Greeks scheduled joint naval maneuvers in April.