United Nations Peacekeeping and Peacemaking and the Cyprus Question

Assembly of Resolution 814 (IX) of December 17, 1954.~ Today, the United Nations is faced with the most critical phase of the Cyprus question, as well as with a serious test of its peacekeeping and peacemaking potential. The origins of this international dispute precede the involvement of the organization in it and can be traced to a complicated set of factors reflecting the island’s strategic location and history. The presence of two distinct ethnic communities on the island; the absence oi national integration; the penetration by and eventual institutionalization of external powers in its political life; and the national security concerns of Britain and the United States in Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean, have affected the evolution of the dispute and the way the United Nations has responded to it.2 Thus the Cyprus question remains a classic example of the interplay of national and international disputes and of the difficulty of delineating between them.