Last Tango in Cyprus

One is 82, the other 77. They met as opposing lawyers in a string of terrorist trials nearly half a century ago and have grown old trying to outfox each other in one of the world’s most intractable armed standoffs.

Their common obsession has spawned a respectful but wary friendship. They have no doubt spent more time conversing than many married couples do, and their periodic estrangement has been punctuated by jovial barbs, traded through the media, about each other’s advancing girth and age.

Over the decades, the bantering, backslapping chemistry between Glafcos Clerides, Greek Cypriot president of the internationally recognized government of Cyprus, and Rauf R. Denktash, his younger Turkish Cypriot counterpart, has become a legendary counterpoint to their chronic failure to negotiate an end to the 38-year-old conflict.

But faced with growing outside pressure and a one-year deadline, the two men have opened a new round of contacts that is viewed as their last and most promising effort to bridge the Mediterranean island’s rigid ethnic partition.

At issue is Denktash’s claim--recognized only by Turkey and enforced by about 35,000 Turkish troops--to rule the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on one-third of the island. Asserting sovereignty over all of Cyprus, Clerides’ government insists on reunification in exchange for a wide measure of local autonomy for the Turkish Cypriots, who are outnumbered 3 to 1 by the far wealthier Greek Cypriots.

Face to face for the first time in four years, Clerides and Denktash met Dec. 4 in the U.N.-controlled buffer zone that has separated their parts of the island since 1974. They agreed to resume formal negotiations there today in the presence of U.N. envoy Alvaro de Soto.

Later in December, each leader crossed the cease-fire line for the first time since 1975 and dined as a guest at the other’s home. They met again informally Friday to discuss how to search for the bodies of more than 2,200 people who disappeared in ethnic fighting in the 1960s and ‘70s.

The men, who call each other by their first names, are treating each step with a sense of urgency.

“As far as Clerides and myself are concerned, I think this is the last tango,” Denktash said in a recent interview, noting that his rival is not expected to seek reelection early next year. “We cannot waste this opportunity.”

“They know each other so well that there can be no tricks,” said Greek Cypriot government spokesman Michalis Papapetrou. “If Denktash will be a little reasonable, we can reach a solution, because Clerides means business.”

The new talks are being driven by an expected vote next December on Cyprus’ bid to join the European Union and by hopes that EU membership can bring prosperity to both parts of the island if a rapprochement comes first.

As that deadline looms, each Cypriot leader is sounding eager to supplant his legacy as co-perpetrator of the conflict with the image of a peacemaker.

A History of Negotiating

Denktash was the Turkish Cypriot community leader and Clerides president of Cyprus’ House of Representatives when ethnic violence erupted in December 1963, three years after independence from Britain. They were chief negotiators during the explosive year 1974, when Greece’s military junta sponsored a coup that aimed to make Cyprus part of Greece, prompting a Turkish military invasion that left 6,700 people dead or missing and a total of 215,000 displaced on both sides.

The two British-trained lawyers go way back. In the 1950s, Clerides was a defense attorney for accused terrorists of EOKA, which resisted British rule. Denktash, who helped found a Turkish Cypriot paramilitary group to counter EOKA, was a prosecutor for the colonial administration.

Clerides lost those trials but not respect for his adversary. In 1964, he ventured into Nicosia’s embattled Turkish quarter to drive Denktash’s wife and children to the airport and get them safely aboard a flight to Turkey. Later that year, with Denktash under arrest, Clerides says he got wind of a plan to have the prisoner “shot while escaping” and helped win his safe release.

The Greek Cypriot leader’s four-volume memoir, “Cyprus: My Deposition,” is tinged with regret for his failure in the early 1970s to persuade then-President Makarios to restore the autonomy that Turkish Cypriots had lost in 1963. That, Clerides writes, would have prevented the island’s violent partition.

Hope for a Cyprus accord has long been based on a belief that Clerides is driven to reverse the disastrous result of that miscalculation and that Denktash is equally determined to end the poverty and international isolation of his self-proclaimed ministate. But their decades of talks have frustrated a who’s who of statesmen, from Henry Kissinger to Kofi Annan.

One problem is Denktash’s distrust of the United Nations, which is committed to reunifying Cyprus. The two Cypriots negotiate in English, but Denktash once switched to his rudimentary Greek to urge Clerides to shut Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian who was then U.N. secretary-general, out of the room and continue mano a mano without “this Arab who is trying to cheat us both.”

Their negotiations can get downright comic. Years ago, Clerides tuned out a Denktash harangue and, to underline his indifference, pulled a camera out of his bag and spent several minutes trying clumsily to insert a roll of film. Denktash, a superb photographer, walked over, grabbed the camera, quickly loaded it, gave some terse pointers on how to use it and went back to his fiery speech.

The hopes of two generations of Cypriots have risen and fallen on the two men’s smallest gestures and perceived slights.

Denktash refused for months to use a U.N.-installed hotline because he mistakenly thought the Greek Cypriot leader had plugged the phone in beside his toilet. Denktash did call with condolences for the recent death of Clerides’ brother. And when Clerides’ daughter got married, a piece of wedding cake was dispatched across the buffer zone to the Denktash residence.

“They get along famously and are similar in many ways, but Denktash feels intellectually superior to Clerides, a bit disdainful,” says a former international mediator who requested anonymity. “And Clerides feels a certain bitterness that Denktash has not been more accommodating to someone who helped get him out of jail.”

But the Cyprus dispute transcends their colorful personalities and reflects more the ancient religious, political and ethnic differences between the island’s ancestral motherlands, Greece and Turkey. Both of these are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and tensions between them have put a strain on the U.S.-led alliance.

The two countries, which went to the brink of war six years ago, have been at loggerheads over the EU’s expected admission of Cyprus under the Clerides government.

As long as the island remains partitioned, EU membership would bring economic benefits only to the Greek Cypriot side. Turkey last year threatened, in that event, to annex the Turkish Cypriot region--a step that would dim Turkey’s own hopes of joining the union. Greece, in turn, warned that Cyprus must be allowed to join the EU with or without a settlement and said it would use its power as a member to veto nine other EU candidates, all from Eastern Europe, if Cyprus was kept out.

In recent weeks, Greece and Turkey have been pressing their ethnic kin on Cyprus to be more flexible and strike a deal.

Denktash is hearing that message not only from his allies in the Turkish government and military but also from a growing number of Cypriots in the north who are fed up with the presence of Turkish troops and the fallout from Turkey’s prolonged financial crisis.

European diplomats say that any accord would probably include the return of some Turkish-occupied territory to Greek Cypriots and some power-sharing deal for a central government that would control banking and foreign relations island-wide. Greek and Turkish Cypriot regions would continue to run their affairs, including local policing, while a reduced number of Turkish troops would stay in the north as part of a larger U.N. peacekeeping force.

Transition Period Key

The key to an agreement, the diplomats say, would be the terms and length of a transition period during which freedom to move across the buffer zone and acquire property would be restricted for the sake of avoiding renewed bloodshed.

In the interview at his presidential mansion on the old Venetian walls of Nicosia, the capital, Denktash said that such freedoms should be suspended for an indefinite period to prevent his people from being overwhelmed.

“Separation is necessary for our security,” he said. “Here we have two nations that were at each other’s throats for so many years. You cannot simply put these people together again. So compromise is absolutely necessary. But how can you expect Mr. Clerides to compromise when the whole world tells him that they are a full-fledged candidate for the EU?”

Clerides, who declined to be interviewed while the contacts are underway, told CNN’s Turkish-language station in November: “We are happy that we are going to join the EU, but we would be much happier if we can find the solution and join without difficulties. We want a solution urgently.”

He added: “We don’t trust that one day Denktash is not going to walk away and say, ‘I am now a sovereign state.’ We cannot accept any division of Cyprus into two equal states.”

The two aging warhorses have been sparring like this for so long that some wonder whether they have it in them to make a deal.

“They love the game,” said Mehmet Ali Birand, an Istanbul-based Turkish commentator and columnist who has been covering Clerides-Denktash talks since 1965. “They love exploiting each other’s weaknesses and going for the kill. They’re so pleased when they score points. We’re watching two samurai going into their final fight.

“But they are trapped,” he said. “Whether they want it or not, they may be pushed into a settlement. The expectations are extremely high.”