Through eight months, the people of Cyprus have maintained an uneasy truce with the British authorities, awaiting the day when their cause would once again reach the floor of the United Nations. For weeks. Cyprus' exiled Archbishop Makarios has haunted Manhattan, a black-robed reminder of Cypriot demands. Last week, as debate started in New York, the island erupted with riots.
Jumping their cue by two days, 1,500 Greek teen-agers swirled into the twisted alleyways of Nicosia, swarmed into a cathedral chanting: "Enosis" (Union with Greece). Outside, they were met by black-helmeted security police. Recruited from the Turkish Cypriot community by the British, the "Black Turks" are hated by the Greek Cypriots. Truncheons came, down on the backs of screaming boys and girls. Tear-gas shells were lobbed into crowds of rock-hurling youngsters.
Under the Tower. On the day the debate did begin, shops were shuttered across the island in a general strike. Under the shadow of Othello's Tower in Famagusta, Gjreek Cypriots clashed with police in a two-hour battle. At Ephtakomi, someone defiantly flew a Greek flag; a British patrol attempting to tear it down was stoned by the villagers. The patrol counterattacked with fixed bayonets.
Next day in Nicosia, 300 students armed themselves with empty Coca-Cola bottles, stones and iron bars, locked themselves on the roof of a school library. They pelted "Black Turk" police in the square below, beat back attempts to storm the library entrance. Security forces broke the siege only after firing volleys of tear gas and charging in with batons for hand-to-hard fighting. The same day, a rumor swept Nicosia of the murder of two Turks by EOKA's Greek terrorists. Turk Cyprors stormed out of their quarters, sacked a Greek church and five shops.
Only seven days before, Sir Hugh Fo:)t had arrived to take over as Britain's new governor. Cyprus quickly learned that it had a new kind of governor. Unarmed and unguarded, Foot walked through the streets of Nicosia to assess the damage, mingled with shopkeepers. "A governor with guts," admitted Greek and Turk alike, and cheered him. Next day Foot paid a surprise visit to twelve Greek women terrorists held in Nicosia's central prison, ordered two of them released immediately on grounds of health.
Above Pride. At week's end Greece failed to muster a two-thirds majority in the U.N. General Assembly for a resolution which urged further negotiations "with a view to have the right of self-determination applied in the case of the people of Cyprus." The U.N. rejection touched off new rioting.
Foot, who had arrived declaring that he had "an open mind," pleaded for calm in which Britain, Turkey and Greece could try to unravel the tangle. He was not going to let pride stand in his way. When local officials refused to come to see him at Government House, Foot called on Nicosia's Greek Cypriot mayor in his own home. "Things are bad—very bad," said Foot. "But give me a break and I know we can find a way."