 - Last login: 30 hours agoThamus
- Thamus is a 90 year old guy from Ireland.
- Likes 5,371 pages, 33 videos, 39 photos • 368 fans • Received 157 reviews
- Member since Dec 30, 2005
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. [Romeo & Juliet, II,3]
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Foreign Policy In Focus | Postcard from...Nicosia
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Apr 9, 1:01pm
1 review
•http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5137
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And the wall came tumbling down ...
I flew to Cyprus and headed to Nicosia to watch the historic opening of a barricaded street in the last divided capital city in the world. I wasn't there when the barricades went up and split the city into north (Turkish) and south (Greek) in 1963, but it was still something of a closing circle for me.
I was in Cyprus during the brutal Turkish invasion in 1974 - indeed I fled with wife and child in the car from Kyrenia to Limassol as the Turkish tanks rolled ashore west of Kyrenia where we had rented a holiday home.
It was all very melancholically nostalgic for me (the child is now a married woman 10,000 km away) as my friend George Iacovou, now virtually prime minister of Cyprus since the recent election, opened the Ledra Sreet crossing on the Greek side and the curious crowds lined up to get passes north and south.
There followed a sobering reminder that peace in divided Cyprus has a long way to go. As night fell some 12 hours after the opening ceremony, the barriers slammed down on Ledra Street again as Turkish occupation forces flouted a status quo agreement and penetrated deep into the UN controlled buffer zone between the two sides. Turkish guards refused to leave and the Greek Cypriot government quickly sealed off the checkpoint. After the arrival and mediation of United Nations officials, the Turkish forces withdrew back to their ceasefire positions and the crossing was reopened.
 [PICTURE: Left, the sealed Ledra Street, with a Greek guard post, looking north, a week before the opening. Right, the barricade has just come down, and I take this shot from the Turkish side of the border looking south. ©Thamus080403]
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