Cyprus-Forum.com

[Nikitas]

"You need troops on the ground and a supply route.." and the more troops you put there the more secure the supply route has to be, so more troops and so on and on.

[repulsewarrior]

To be honest, I never truly understood the fuss about controlling Cyprus and what makes her so important to others.

Turkey calls it an invincible aircraft carrier, Britain keeps her bases sovereign, much intrigue over the Modern era by many other International players, a desire by interlocutors to hold the balance of power on the island, and no solution for about sixty years...

...hmm the fuss; could it be its geographic position? control over three continents (and now, also, more than rich copper deposits).

[Gasman]

Martin Packard MBE

Worth reading this too if you intend to read the book:

http://www.greece.org/cyprus/Treason3.htm

Two snippets - the 'flock of sheep' story:

Gen Young appointed Martin, a fluent Greek speaker, as a roving trouble-shooter and negotiator. With two officers from the mainland Greek and Turkish armies, he roamed the north of Cyprus by helicopter, settling disputes.

Diplomacy

We eventually found the village, and even an interpreter. Here, in Easter 1964, Martin had resolved a conflict over a flock of sheep, stolen from the Turkish villages by their Greek Cypriots neighbours. Martin tracked down the flock in a Greek village.

But none of the Turkish Cypriots were prepared to come with him to get them. So he went himself. He took the youngest lamb and flung it across his shoulder. The mother followed, and so did the rest of the flock.

"I walked a very long way, I was very tired, leading this flock of sheep," he said. "We arrived at the village and all of the villagers rushed out as if I were Moses coming back with some great message."

The old men of the village remembered the incident, but were not conspicuously grateful. It was a good thing Martin had got their sheep back, they said, grudgingly, because otherwise they were planning to steal a Greek flock in retaliation.

Martin believes such small episodes were the key to preventing the island drifting towards ethnic separation. But, he says, this was not what the Americans and British had in mind.

Discredited:

Upon leaving Cyprus, Martin Packard prepared a report, which he handed to his superiors, in which he accused the Greek Cypriots of slaughtering 27 Turkish Cypriots in the Nicosia General Hospital.

His accusations appeared on April 2, 1988 in the ‘Guardian’ newspaper through his friend at the time Chief Editor of the paper Peter Preston, who, in 1964, was also working in Cyprus.

On February 10, 1994 Channel 4 Television showed a documentary called ‘Secret History – Dead or Alive’ which in a way addressed the drama of the 1,619 missing Greek Cypriots since the brutal Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974.

Martin Packard made an unexpected appearance to say that in 1963/64 he had prepared a report in which he included that: "The largest single element of these missing people were the Turkish Cypriot patients at the General Hospital. Nothing had been heard of any of them. It was assumed that they were being held in custody somewhere. The outcome of my investigation suggested that they had all of them been killed in the General Hospital. They had been removed at night, the bodies from there had been taken out to outlying farms up in the region of Skilloura and out there they had been dismembered and passed through farm dicing machines and they had then been seeded into the ploughed land."

I found these accusations too horrific to be true. Immediately, I wrote to the then Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Heathcoat-Amory and demanded to be allowed to view Packard’s report.

As he spoke about this report having definitely not been released, I found Mr Packard’s liberty to disclose such damning secret information, with no evidence at all to substantiate it, extraordinarily questionable.

I raised the issue that he either had breached the Official Secrets Act as he spoke from knowledge of a report still retained or he spoke in his capacity of a British conciliator with the Department’s permission. Whatever the case, we had a right to see the evidence of what he was so freely accusing us.

My fight with the Foreign Office and other government departments lasted five years (1994-1999) until he was finally ‘ordered’ to close the matter by withdrawing the accusations.

Peter Preston, with an article in the ‘Guardian’ (which was equally guilty and responsible for printing unsubstantiated allegations), on May 3, 1999, wrote that Martin Packard revisited the island and found out that he was given wrong information, no evidence at all, and that in fact no Turkish Cypriot had been harmed.

I wrote an article in Simerini on May 18, 1999 and another one was written by Charalambos Charalambides on May 19, 1999, finally revealing the truth.

Packard was wrong and had no evidence whatsoever for those horrific allegations against us.

The damage, however, to the Greek side was immeasurable. The Turks had used Packard’s allegations to the full and in all international forums, as admitted by Peter Preston.

Packard was obliged to write to Kofi Annan withdrawing the allegations and restoring the truth, which is that no Turkish Cypriot had been killed.

They were all protected under Makarios’s orders.

And that was the result of Packard’s role in Cyprus in 1964 which had nothing to do with petty conflicts over….sheep between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots.

[BigDutch]

Finished this book a few weeks back. Overall impression after reading was that the 'man on the street' of Cyprus generally had no major issue with the 'other' group, but that fanatics driven by external powers were the catalyst of issues from '63 onwards.

The American guy that is reported to say to Martin something like 'thats great, but you got it all wrong, what we want is partition' ... has that been validated at all ?

Does this board believe the contents of the book to be false in anyway ?

[Get Real!]

Does this board believe the contents of the book to be false in anyway ?

I don't know about the rest of the board but I believe in this...

http://thecyprusproblem.100webspace.net ... icle01.htm

[BigDutch]

Excuse my inability to classify Mr Packard in those two groups , his publication isn't an official British document and thus technically an independent author, albeit one with many first hand experiences.

I would like to think, due to his pro-Cypriot peacemaking and anti-UN?Brit peacekeeping that he would be firmly in the first group ?

[Get Real!]

Excuse my inability to classify Mr Packard in those two groups , his publication isn't an official British document and thus technically an independent author, albeit one with many first hand experiences.

I would like to think, due to his pro-Cypriot peacemaking and anti-UN?Brit peacekeeping that he would be firmly in the first group ?

See if you can classify him after considering this...

http://thecyprusproblem.100webspace.net ... icle29.htm

[BigDutch]

...instead of sensationalized hype with a price tag from unauthorized opportunistic individuals out to make a buck at your expense!

ok i can understand that selling a book rather than giving away a downloable .PDF report puts him firmly in the commercial camp, and as boring books don't sell it could be suggested that the book is spiced up to be controversial ... but ... these first hand incident reports from a person without any obvious sway to either the enosis or takism cause give an insight no ?

By sensationalizing the report you effectively get the naïve reader emotionally involved and sell more books without actually informing of anything factual or worthwhile!

Sure, I am naive in the ways of the Cypriot but as this book basically puts Britain firmly in the firing line promoting inter-communal problems and 'playing' with the young government ... which side of the conflict do you think his publication benefits the most ?

[Get Real!]

:eyecrazy:

...instead of sensationalized hype with a price tag from unauthorized opportunistic individuals out to make a buck at your expense!

ok i can understand that selling a book rather than giving away a downloable .PDF report puts him firmly in the commercial camp, and as boring books don't sell it could be suggested that the book is spiced up to be controversial ... but ... these first hand incident reports from a person without any obvious sway to either the enosis or takism cause give an insight no ?

By sensationalizing the report you effectively get the naïve reader emotionally involved and sell more books without actually informing of anything factual or worthwhile!

Sure, I am naive in the ways of the Cypriot but as this book basically puts Britain firmly in the firing line promoting inter-communal problems and 'playing' with the young government ... which side of the conflict do you think his publication benefits the most ?

Well, I’d rather read the official UN reports of that period than an ex-serviceman’s personal accounts thereof.

I can supply credible links for pretty much everything pertaining to the CyProb so there’s no need for anyone to risk reading material from unauthorized individuals.

For example, for a quick summary of major events since the UN’s involvement you can read here…

The 1964 Establishment of UNFICYP
http://www.unficyp.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_ ... ic&lang=l1

The 1967 crisis
http://www.unficyp.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_ ... ic&lang=l1

Events in the Summer of 1974
http://www.unficyp.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_ ... ic&lang=l1

…and there are countless other credible sites to read from, the links to which I supply in my website.

PS: Of course, there’s nothing wrong with reading about an ex-serviceman’s adventures in Cyprus, but they should be treated as such!

[BigDutch]

Well, I’d rather read the official UN reports of that period than an ex-serviceman’s personal accounts thereof.

Back in '03 i downloaded documents from the UN site with a view to doing as you have suggested, but as the UNFICYP archive only covers period jan '94 onwards, Packards reports of 'the early days' are as good to independent that i can find ? Unless you have a link to a deeper archive of UNFICYP documents ?

Anyway, back to the thread topic - What do you think about the change in operations and thus reported success of Packard's unit during the first 3-4 months of '64 compared to the final 3 months when UNFICYP officially came into being?