Face-to-Face-to-Face in the Aegean

When I took over the State Department's Intelligence Bureau in 1985, I told my staff to send me all important stuff but no cables from any embassy on the subject of Cyprus negotiations. As fate would have it, I left that position years later to become U.S. Ambassador to Turkey.

The quarter-century division of Cyprus between Greek and Turkish Cypriots has been the biggest thorn in a long, contentious Greek-Turkish relationship, but for the rest of the world it has become mostly a yawn. There has been little threat of war and, rightly or wrongly, 30,000 Turkish forces have remained on the island since the 1974 invasion to keep it that way.

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