Peter Preston: Bismarckian board games
[Peter Preston was editor of the Guardian for 20 years, from 1975 to 1995, and now writes columns for the paper and for the Observer.]
The question - from Gaza to Pristina - is whether peace arrives top down or bottom up, whether it's ordinary folk or diplomatic men in suits who do the business. And from an island of strife 45 long years ago is the beginning of a surprising answer. Can we find friendship and understanding between warring communities? Perhaps we can.
The presidents of Greek and Turkish Cyprus met again top down last week. It was the 19th encounter of this negotiating round, and the third stuck in argument over property rights to the land seized when the Turkish army invaded. These talks remain the best chance of settlement since intercommunal life first soured a decade before Ankara sent in its troops; but they lumber on. Finish as promised by Christmas 2008, chaps? Make that autumn 2009. You're still hopeful because the ordinary people want to draw a line under tragedy. But need it ever have come to this?
Martin Packard (Commander RN, retired) never believed in the inevitability of Cyprus partition. Through the first six months of 1964, for the British army and then for the UN, he led a tiny trouble-shooting team - a Greek, a Turk, two Brits - who believed that a countryside of split, frightened villages could live in harmony again. He drank endless coffees with village chiefs, he sorted out disputes, he liaised with both sets of Cypriot leaders who, in turn, liaised with each other through him.
And everyone knew he made a difference. Why else did the Foreign Office and the US state department contrive to send him home and close down his operation? "Very impressive, but you've got it all wrong, son," one of the high priests of US foreign policy, George Ball, told him. "Hasn't anyone here told you that our objective here is partition, not reintegration?" The west didn't mind a divided Cyprus on Nato's eastern flank. The men at the very top were playing their own Bismarckian board games...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
The question - from Gaza to Pristina - is whether peace arrives top down or bottom up, whether it's ordinary folk or diplomatic men in suits who do the business. And from an island of strife 45 long years ago is the beginning of a surprising answer. Can we find friendship and understanding between warring communities? Perhaps we can.
The presidents of Greek and Turkish Cyprus met again top down last week. It was the 19th encounter of this negotiating round, and the third stuck in argument over property rights to the land seized when the Turkish army invaded. These talks remain the best chance of settlement since intercommunal life first soured a decade before Ankara sent in its troops; but they lumber on. Finish as promised by Christmas 2008, chaps? Make that autumn 2009. You're still hopeful because the ordinary people want to draw a line under tragedy. But need it ever have come to this?
Martin Packard (Commander RN, retired) never believed in the inevitability of Cyprus partition. Through the first six months of 1964, for the British army and then for the UN, he led a tiny trouble-shooting team - a Greek, a Turk, two Brits - who believed that a countryside of split, frightened villages could live in harmony again. He drank endless coffees with village chiefs, he sorted out disputes, he liaised with both sets of Cypriot leaders who, in turn, liaised with each other through him.
And everyone knew he made a difference. Why else did the Foreign Office and the US state department contrive to send him home and close down his operation? "Very impressive, but you've got it all wrong, son," one of the high priests of US foreign policy, George Ball, told him. "Hasn't anyone here told you that our objective here is partition, not reintegration?" The west didn't mind a divided Cyprus on Nato's eastern flank. The men at the very top were playing their own Bismarckian board games...