Under the Threat of Guns

"Georgadjis did this!"

According to bystanders, those were the words uttered by the shaken but uninjured leader of troubled Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, after his helicopter was riddled with bullets two weeks ago. His Beatitude was referring to Polycarpos Georgadjis, 39, an underground hero in the revolt against British rule, Makarios' Interior Minister until 1968, and more recently one of the archbishop's principal political rivals. Georgadjis (pronounced Yorkajis) was under intense surveillance after the assassination attempt; when he tried to leave the island, policemen ordered him off a Beirut-bound airliner as it prepared for takeoff. Last week, barely 48 hours after his departure was thwarted, he was ambushed while driving on the road from Nicosia to Famagusta. Six bullets tore into his back and left side, killing him instantly.

In the faction-plagued island, where Greeks often hate fellow Greeks as much as they do the minority Turks, the list of suspects in the murder was a long one. As Makarios' minister for police, intelligence and defense, Georgadjis made many enemies. Seventeen months ago, he was booted from the Cabinet after allegations that he was involved in a plot to murder Greek Premier George Papadopoulos (who was best man at Georgadjis' 1967 wedding). The Greeks insisted that Georgadjis had supplied the explosive with which assassins tried to blow up Papadopoulos' car. Georgadjis thereupon helped form the Unified Democratic Party, which might have won enough seats in June's scheduled parliamentary elections to hoist him back into the Cabinet -- against Makarios' wishes. Thus his murderers could have been members of one of the pro-Makarios secret armies on the island. They could have been Greek officers in Cyprus' National Guard, still bristling over the Papadopoulos affair. Or they might have been Cypriots of the extremist National Front, which has been waging a terrorist campaign to encourage enosis, or union with Greece, rather than the in dependence that both Georgadjis and the archbishop considered more feasible.

Georgadjis himself seemed to fear Makarios. After the assassination attempt against the archbishop, government sources leaked reports that fingerprints and a gun had been found that implicated Georgadjis' supporters. Police searched his apartment and confiscated two pistols. Georgadjis was fined $384 for having concealed weapons. After he was removed from his plane and forced to remain on the island, Georgadjis warned: "Anything can happen now. To Makarios, people are like lemons: when they are squeezed dry, he throws them away."

No Clues. Four thousand people and a dirgeful police band turned out for Georgadjis' funeral. Children carried banners that read "We will not forget your struggle." Makarios, however, pointedly stayed away. That -- and a lack of serious clues to Georgadjis' murder -- kept tension high. The latest round of talks in the fruitless 21-month negotiations to find a formula for coexistence between the is land's 490,000 Greeks and 110,000 Turks were adjourned suddenly. "We would have been talking under the threat of guns," explained Turkish Leader Rauf Denktash. Moreover, Makarios, who on one pretext or another has delayed parliamentary elections for five years, may seize upon the tension as an excuse for canceling the June balloting.

To complicate matters still more, the Soviet Union notified Turkey that Greek officers in Cyprus were plotting a coup aimed at reuniting the island with Greece. Moscow fears that such a development would bring Cyprus -- now neutralist -- into NATO and give the organization an invaluable natural aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. Whatever the truth of the Soviet reports, Ankara reacted sharply, warning that Turkey would oppose any such threat with "all her might and resources." The Turks, who came close to invading Cyprus during the communal upheavals of 1967, seem to mean it.

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