"Surrender, you Turkish dogs, or we will kill you all!" This cry blared from a loudspeaker on an armor-plated bulldozer in the Cypriot coastal town of Ktima. From behind sandbags in the town's Turkish quarter, embattled partisans screamed back: "Come closer, you Greek swine, and you will die!"
Like two scorpions in a bottle, Greek and Turkish Cypriots were still relentlessly tearing at each other. The latest battle began when Greeks fought Turks with bazookas, heavy machine guns, mortars and grenades. By the time British troops wrung a cease-fire from the combatants, 24 had died and more than 60 were wounded in the bloodiest week of fighting on Cyprus this year.
Cruising Fleet. From Turkey came roars of indignation. Five thousand Ankara students marched through the capital shouting "Down with Makarios!" . Others gathered at the statue of Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey's founder, to sing his favorite marching song: The Mist Covers the Top of the Mountain. Then they marched angrily to army headquarters to present a parcel of Cyprus soil to the General Staff. The demonstrators wanted action from the government, and they got it in the form of a gravely worded note issued by the Foreign Office. "The massacre, which is becoming a genocide, has forced Turkey to review its peace-loving and patient attitude," declared the note, adding that if the cease-fire on Cyprus was not immediately restored, Turkey would undertake "unilateral intervention." Word spread that Turkey's expeditionary force massed at the seaport of Iskenderun was ready to invade Cyprus in 48 hours.
The threat of war stunned Greece.
In Athens, Defense Ministry chiefs hastily called a 5:30 a.m. military conference, and the Greek navy was ordered to cruise off the island of Rhodes, accompanied by transports loaded with paratroopers. Said aging Premier George Papandreou: "If Turkey enters the insane asylum, we will too."
Followers & Leaders. The crisis abruptly focused attention on the laggard United Nations peacekeeping force which, it seemed, was still only in the discussion stage. Two weeks ago, the Security Council had authorized such a force but, despite backstage urging by Britain and the U.S., it had not yet been assembled. "Events move very rapidly these days," said Canada's Prime Minister Lester Pearson, inferring that they move far faster than governments. Canada was willing to supply 1,000 soldiers but did not intend to be the only partner of Britain in a peacekeeping operation.
Sweden was also ready to send troops but demanded that at least one other neutral, non-NATO nation join the operation as well. Finland would fill the bill, but could not immediately because President Urho Kekkonen was out of the country. Brazil, torn by domestic unrest and a faltering economy, could not spare even a battalion. That left Austria and Ireland. But Austria, trapped by a Cabinet crisis, was without a government, and Ireland was willing to play follower, not leader.