Chipping Away the Invisible Wall Across CYPRUS.

• Author: BLACK, JAN KNIPPERS
• Position: Greek and Turkish Cypriots separated by the Green Line

"... Guardians of ethnic interest may find it harder as time goes by to maintain militancy among their constituencies."

IN THE SUMMER OF 2000, it appeared that peace talks and gestures of rapprochement or reconciliation had come into vogue. On the Korean Peninsula, divided so many wars ago, families were finally reuniting across the 38th Parallel. A warm glow of optimism was emanating again from Northern Ireland. For the sake of midwestern grain farmers, Congress had begun to nibble off the edges of the U.S.'s 40-year-old embargo against Cuba. The United Nations seemed to be shifting strategies in order to promote resolution, rather than retribution, in Iraq. Even Middle East peace talks broke some new ground.

By October, though, the promise of peace in the Middle East once again had been surrendered to its enemies. In the Aegean, however, a long-suffering effort to break through a virtual wall carried on despite obstacles and setbacks. While the media spotlight was illuminating Israeli-Palestinian talks at Camp David, a less noticed marathon of peace talks was under way in Geneva between leaders of the Greek and Turkish ethnic communities in Cyprus. No one involved in these "proximity" (as opposed to face-to-face) talks, including the UN-appointed negotiator who shuttled between the two leaders, expected immediate resolution. Nevertheless, for the first time in a decade, there was cautious optimism that end runs might be made around the stalemate.

Even as the Berlin Wall was being sold off in chunks to tourists at the beginning of the 1990s, walls were being reinforced in Cyprus, as Greek and Turkish Cypriots faced off along the island's invisible, but UN-demarcated, Attila Line. More popularly known as the "Green Line," it cuts across the center of Nicosia's old walled city and extends from there across the country, dividing Greek and Turkish communities.

Patrolled by UN peacekeeping troops, the Green Line was drawn in 1974 to separate warring parties after a Greek effort to annex the independent island-state was met by a Turkish invasion and occupation of the northern one-third of the island. The fragile detente began to deteriorate in early 1990, when Greek students trying to tear down Turkish flags across the Green Line were arrested and imprisoned. Since then, only diplomats have been permitted routine crossing.

The real issue that inflamed new tensions was the application, in July, 1990, by the government of Cyprus, representing the ethnically Greek southern two-thirds of the island and enjoying international recognition, for membership in the European Community. Since Greece itself had been admitted to the EC while the bid of Turkey had been rejected, Greek and Turkish Cypriots alike assumed that membership for Cyprus would lead to a resolution to the impasse favorable to the Greek majority.

In reaction to the application, Turkish Cypriot leaders threatened to begin resettlement of Varosha, the modern sector of Famagusta, which had been overwhelmingly ethnically Greek while the old center city was Turkish. Greek Cypriots had fled Varosha in 1974, when Turkish forces occupied the northern third (actually 37%) of the island. The once bustling port and center of tourism has since remained a ghost town and a symbol of unresolved crisis and political failure.

The coup of 1974, promoted by the military junta then governing Greece, toppled the government of Archbishop Makarios, who had ruled since the British withdrew and recognized an independent Cyprus in 1960. That the British held on as long as they did, against five years of continuous armed resistance, has been attributed in part to the strategic value that has cursed the...