Cyprus: Deceptive Peace

In Cyprus the days were hot and the guns, for the moment, were cold. Turkish and Greek Cypriot sentries stood listlessly at the sandbagged strongpoints. Under watchful eyes of U.N. escorts, farmers drove their tractors through fields, bringing in the wheat harvest. At Nicosia's Ledra Palace Hotel, a new swimming pool was dedicated with a cocktail party. Not far away, a new Hilton was abuilding.

Yet everyone knew that each evening, when the sun fell behind the Troodos Mountains, the smuggling of men and arms into the island resumed, making peace an ugly deception.

On the Beach. Greece, limited by treaty to a 950-man contingent in Cyprus, has carried shipload after shipload of fresh troops and guns into the southern port of Limassol. Numbering more than 3,000 so far, they were quickly transported to camps of the Greek Cypriot national guard in the Troodos Mountains and elsewhere. Part of a Nicosia mental hospital is being used as a storage depot for newly arrived Greek arms and ammunition; four batteries of field artillery, quantities of light antiaircraft guns, antitank weapons and armored cars have recently turned up at a Greek encampment at Lefkoniko, near Famagusta.

The Greek Cypriot government of Archbishop-President Makarios insists that the new arrivals are for the most part Cypriot students returning from their schools in Athens—though it is not clear why the students arrive at night and head for the hills in trucks.

Turkey, which is entitled to keep a regiment of 650 soldiers in Cyprus, has also pumped in fresh forces from the mainland. But the Turkish Cypriots, lacking the control of the main ports that Makarios' men enjoy, have had to adopt unorthodox import techniques that make it impossible to bring in as many reinforcements as the Greeks. One battalion of perhaps 200 paratroopers was recently dropped clandestinely along the 15-mile-long road from Nicosia to coastal Kyrenia, where the legal Turkish regiment keeps watch over the only outlet from the capital the Turkish Cypriots control. Along with the troops, the Turkish planes dropped bundles of tommy guns, rifles, mortars, bazookas and ammunition.

The Turks have landed by sea as well, mainly on the safely held beaches not far from Lefka on the northwest coast. Fast Turkish navy motorboats bring 30-man platoons across the 50-mile Mediterranean stretch; they are regularly watched by a Swedish U.N. infantry company that has its headquarters in full view of the shore. In all, some 500 Turkish soldiers have landed there, helping to secure a solidly held 30-sq.-mi. area—an ideal beachhead in case a major Turkish troop intervention should be decreed by Ankara.