What now in Cyprus?

U.N. Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Cyprus Espen Barth Eide will be presenting the Security Council an assessment of the past two years of the Cyprus peacemaking efforts, which ended last week in Crans-Montana with a crash landing. What will he say? Will he, like his boss, prefer to avoid placing the responsibility of the collapse on either side, or will he accuse the Greek Cypriots of intransigence? He will most likely take the first road. Yet, the Security Council will have to make a decision on the extension of the mandate of the U.N. Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), which was first deployed in March 1964.

Naturally, over the long and not so successful history of the UNFICYP, many contributing countries have withdrawn, and the bulk of the burden of its cost had to be provided by Greek Cypriots, who for their own legitimacy still see benefits of the continued presence of it on Cyprus. No one expects the Security Council to terminate the mandate of the UNFICYP or the "goodwill mission" entrusted on the secretary-general even though a wide consensus emerged after the collapse in Crans-Montana that the Cyprus federation hopes crushed, a Cyprus deal within the U.N.'s parameters and under the auspices of the secretary-general cannot be achieved. If from 1964 the deployment of the UNFICYP till the 1974 Turkish intervention there have been numerous Greek Cypriot attacks on Turkish Cypriots, but since 1974 there has been no noteworthy violence between the two people of the island thanks to the presence of Turkish peacekeeping troops, is there indeed any need for continued presence of U.N. troops? Most likely, at least some members of the Security Council will raise the issue during Cyprus debates and try to save a date for an end to the UNFICYP.