In some ways it is easier to understand the Cyprus problem in 1999 than it was in 1980 or 1979, because there are now, a whole set of other problems in the Balkans which are very similar. In Cyprus, Bosnia, and Kosovo, people of Orthodox and Muslim nationalities lived side by side in the middle of this century. They generally lived together in friendship and peace until the date when their territories became independent new states. In all three places, there is a common pattern of:

• constitutional arrangements and safeguards breaking down;
• direct confrontation between the different nationalities involved;
• attempts to resolve the problems by force; and
• ethnic cleansing.

We sent our soldiers to Cyprus for much the same reason that we sent our soldiers and airmen to Kosovo only a few weeks ago to protect innocent men, women and children from ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide. We sent them also to preserve the delicate balance in the eastern Mediterranean established by the 1960 Cyprus treaties.

When the Greeks talk about 1974, they speak of it as if the whole story began then and is just the story of an invasion of one country by its neighbour. It was much more complex than that.

• The Republic of Cyprus was created in 1960 as a partnership between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, each of whom had lived for centuries in the island as a distinct people.
• This state of affairs was established in the basic articles of the Cyprus Constitution and was guaranteed by Britain and the two motherlands, Turkey and Greece.
• The settlement established an independent Cyprus for almost the first time in history, in order to prevent Enosis, union of Greece and Cyprus.
• The treaties contained several specific provisions to stop Enosis (union with Greece) happening by the backdoor, for example, by Cyprus and Greece joining together via an outside organisation without Turkish consent. Those treaty clauses are supposed to be in operation even today.
• In 1960 everyone accepted a solution based on Cyprus as a newly independent bi-national country of Greeks and Turks. The Turkish people and the Turkish Cypriot people hoped and believed that this new venture would bring in a new time of peace in our region and renewed partnership between Turkey and Greece. Sadly this was not the case.

• On 4th September 1962, for example, the Greek Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios, said, "Until this Turkish community forming part of the Turkish race, which has been the terrible enemy of Hellenism, is expelled, the duty of the heroes of EOKA can never be considered as terminated."
• The two sides were still setting up the institutions promised in the 1960 Constitution. That Constitution envisaged separate local authorities for Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. The Greek Cypriots, however, refused to comply with this, so the Turkish Cypriots took the case to the Cyprus Constitutional Court. In February 1963, Makarios declared that if the court ruled against the Greek Cypriots they would ignore it. In April the court gave its ruling and the Greek Cypriots ignored it. The President of the Cyprus Constitutional Court resigned - he was a German judge - and the rule of law in Cyprus collapsed.
• As far as the Greeks were concerned, the next stage was to alter the Constitution to remove the powers protecting the Turkish Cypriots. In November the same year, 1963, they demanded the abolition of eight of the basic articles of the 1960 Settlement. This would have ended the bi-national basis of the Republic of Cyprus and turned the Turkish Cypriots into a mere minority under Greek Cypriot control. Their ultimate expulsion from the island began to come into sight. So the Turkish Cypriots naturally refused to endorse these changes.
• It emerged a few years later that by this stage there was a Greek Cypriot written plan for the destruction of the Turkish Cypriot population. It was called the Akritas Plan. At Christmas 1963, the Greek Cypriots put the plan into action. Their militia attacked Turkish Cypriot communities all over the island. Many men, women, and children were killed. Around 270 mosques and other Turkish monuments were desecrated.
• They also eliminated the Turkish Cypriots from the administration. Turkish Cypriot MPs, judges, and other officials were intimidated or prevented by force from doing their jobs. British opinion saw clearly what was happening.
• The Daily Telegraph wrote on 2nd January 1964: "The Greek Cypriot community should not assume that the British military presence can or should secure them against Turkish intervention if they persecute the Turkish Cypriots. We must not be a shelter for double-crossers."
• Some of the news reports of the early years of the Cyprus dispute read like recent despatches from former Yugoslavia. The Daily Telegraph of 28th December 1963 stated, for example: "We went tonight into the sealed-off Turkish Cypriot Quarter of Nicosia in which 200 to 300 people had been slaughtered in the last five days. We were the first Western reporters there and we have seen sights too frightful to be described in print. Horror so extreme that the people seemed stunned beyond tears."
• People in this country saw quite clearly that Turkey might be forced to intervene to protect the Turkish Cypriots. In his memoirs, the then Foreign Secretary, Lord Hume, said, "I was convinced that if Archbishop Makarios could not bring himself to treat the Turkish Cypriots as human beings, he was inviting the invasion and partition of the island."
• The U.S. Undersecretary of State, George Ball, said "Makarios's central interest was to block off Turkish intervention so that he and his Greek Cypriots could go on happily massacring Turkish Cypriots."
• Turkey watched the breakdown of the bi-national state on Cyprus with horror. Many people thought that Turkey should send troops in immediately and rescue the Turkish Cypriots. Some planes were indeed sent in over Nicosia by Turkey but they did not attack. We were persuaded by our western friends to place our faith instead in the United Nations.

• The UN did send in a peace-keeping force in 1964 but it did not restore the balance. For the next ten years, Turkish Cypriots had to live in heavily guarded enclaves totalling less than 3% of the island.
• They lacked the basic essentials of life and survived on relief sent by the Red Crescent, the sister organisation of the Red Cross. The ethnic cleansing continued. On 14th January 1964, Il Giorno of Italy reported, "Right now we are witnessing the exodus of Turkish Cypriots from the villages. Thousands of people abandoning homes, land, and their herds. Greek Cypriot terrorism is relentless. This time the rhetoric of the Hellenes and the statues of Plato do not cover up their barbaric and ferocious behaviour."
• The tension continued. In 1967, the Greek Cypriots launched savage attacks on the Turkish Cypriot population of three villages. UN soldiers watched helpless as women, children, and old men were killed. Many were burnt alive in their own homes. Fifty houses were destroyed. Only another warning flight by the Turkish Air Forces prevented further massacres.
• Negotiations continued for a settlement, but the Greeks would not budge on any key point. Their aim was a Greek Cyprus. Thus the deadlock continued till 1974.

• In summer 1974 Archbishop Makarios, the Greek Cypriot leader, was in a deep confrontation with the Colonels' dictatorship in Athens.
• The Colonels themselves were growing weaker. They needed a political success. Cyprus looked like the obvious prize. So they engineered a coup against Makarios by an EOKA gunman Nicos Sampson. The coup was successful but it bungled one of its prime objectives, the killing of Archbishop Makarios. He escaped, via the British bases, to London.
• Nicos Sampson then made it clear that he would eliminate opposition in the Greek Community and proceed to unify Cyprus with Greece. He said the Turkish Cypriots had nothing to fear, but in fact his gunmen were already massacring Turkish Cypriots in outlying villages.
• This sort of situation had been foreseen to some extent in 1960. That is why there were three outside guarantor powers for the Cyprus Republic - Britain, Turkey, and Greece. Article Four of the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee gave us the right to intervene in precisely these circumstances.
• The Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Ecevit, flew to London and formally asked Britain to intervene with us. The Wilson government refused. They felt Britain was no longer capable of doing so.
• Five days later, on 20th July 1974, Turkey acted alone. There can be no doubt about what the alternative was. On 26th February 1981, the Greek newspaper Elefterotipia, published an interview with Nicos Sampson. He said "If Turkey had not intervened, I would not only have proclaimed ENOSIS (annexation to Greece) - I would have annihilated the Turks in Cyprus."

There are claims about the Greek Cypriot missing persons. The indications are that most of those persons died in the first five days of the coup. On 19th July, before the Turkish armed forces had landed, Makarios told the UN Security Council "I am afraid that the danger of losses is great. I consider the danger from Turkey less than the danger from Greek army officers."

On 17th April 1991, an American official, Ambassador Nelson Ledsky told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "Most of the missing persons disappeared in the first days of July 1974" i.e. in the days before the Turkish intervention. This year there have been several news reports that the Greek Cypriot public is now finding out that this is true and demanding an investigation.

Turkey's intervention in Cyprus swiftly meant the end, for both Nicos Sampson and his masters in Athens, the Greek junta. Both the Greek regimes in Athens and Nicosia collapsed and there was a return to democracy. There could, at this point, have been a completely new starting point in the history of Cyprus and Greek-Turkish relations:

• The Greeks could have held out the hand of friendship to the Turks and worked with us. What did not change was the spirit of all-out opposition to anything Turkish.
• The fighting continued and so did the killings of Turkish Cypriots.
• Peace talks in Geneva in 1974 collapsed because the Greek Cypriots declined to engage in constructive negotiations with the Turkish Cypriots for a new political settlement, based on equality and mutual recognition.
• Turkey therefore established a safe-haven area in the north in which the Turkish Cypriots could conduct their own affairs.
• Die Zeit, the German newspaper, wrote on 30 August 1974 "The massacre of Turkish Cypriots in Paphos and Famagusta is the proof of how justified the Turks were to undertake their (August) intervention."

The situation in Cyprus has evolved even though negotiations produced little or nothing.

A voluntary population exchange agreement was signed with the Greek Cypriots in 1975 and almost all the Turkish Cypriots now live in the north, while the Greek Cypriots live in the south.

The Turkish Cypriots moved progressively towards self-government and independence, under the military protection of the Turkish armed forces.

Prevailing peace in the last 25 years

In the 25 years which have passed, there has been peace on Cyprus of a sort which the island never knew in the years between 1954 (when the EOKA uprising began) and 1974. The late Lord Willis summed up the situation in the House of Lords in December 1986. "Turkey intervened to protect the lives and property of the Turkish-Cypriots and to its credit it has done just that. In the years since, there have been no killings and no massacres." Turkey has always encouraged the Turkish Cypriots to seek a new political settlement with the Greek Cypriots, but we have recognized that it must be one which ensures their equality and security. In March 1986 a settlement was nearly reached.

For many years the Greek Cypriots have tried to impose a siege on the north. This has been made much easier for them by the flagrant imbalance in the western world's way of dealing with Cyprus:

• The Greeks have full recognition. The Turkish Cypriots have none. Future historians may well see this as a crucial error and flagrant contravention of the 1959 and 1960 London and Zurich Treaties by the West in the history of the Cyprus conflict.
• It leads to the destruction of the balance between the communities and to heavy sanctions on the Turkish Cypriots but none on the Greeks.
• The Greeks have much less incentive to takes steps for a settlement. Instead their dream is of defeating the Turkish Cypriots and getting an unconditional submission of the Turks on the island.
• The Greek Cypriots have persistently worked for a political and an economic blockade of the north and unfortunately with considerable success.
• They have persistently portrayed northern Cyprus as a portion of their territory occupied by Turkey, denying the existence and aspirations of the Turkish Cypriots. This touches a raw nerve for the Turkish Cypriots for it reminds them of the central issue in the dispute: the unwillingness of the Greeks to live in a multicultural multinational island. .

The Greek Cypriots have come to regard membership of the EU as their strongest weapon against Turkey. Backed by Greece, they are now on course to join the EU in the next enlargement. In agreeing to accept the Greek Cypriots as the representatives of the whole island including the Turkish Cypriots, the EU has made a fateful move because the 1960 Treaties explicitly ban such a step. Britain and Greece have both decided to ignore this restriction. The accession will create new imbalances and instabilities:

Greeks and Greek Cypriots will have two votes in every EU council and the power to wage an even tougher campaign against Turkey. Roughly speaking this means that one individual Greek will have many times as much influence in the EU as one Briton or German.

But Greek Cypriot accession may also mean the final division of the island and the importing of the Cyprus problem into the very fabric of the EU.

As long as Greek Cypriots claim to be the Government of all Cyprus, and for as long as the world encourages them in that belief there is unlikely to be any progress on the island.

What is the best way for progress in Cyprus? The most recent proposals of President Denktas represent a real opportunity to achieve working peace between the two communities based on a confederation - something which will work and not break down within a few months. This is in the spirit of the original treaties which gave birth to the Republic of Cyprus, based on the equality of the two peoples on the island and striking a balance between the two communities and their respective motherlands. By establishing a firm base of mutual trust and respect between them, in their separate homelands under the same confederal roof they could then go on to a full reconciliation and partnership.

One thing is quite clear. Security is the crucial factor for the Turkish Cypriots. They would be at serious risk if Turkey withdrew its troops. They have absolutely no reason to trust international guarantees. They have seen what happened to defenceless people in Bosnia and Kosovo. Turkey set out at the beginning to prevent such a tragedy and we have succeeded in that aim. We shall continue to do our duty, under the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, to which all the parties as well as the UN still adhere, until either the Greek Cypriots recognize that all the Turkish Cypriots want is sovereign coexistence on an equal basis.

If this does not happen, the division of the island will unfortunately continue and deepen. It is not 25 years old but 35 years old this year. Sooner or later, the rest of the world will surely have to come to terms with this fact, it must be stressed that these divisions were neither chosen nor created by the mainland Turks and Turkish Cypriots. Our goal has always been to find a workable way in which the two peoples of the island can live side by side in security, peace and harmony.