Michael Jansen in Nicosia examines the relationship between the rival leaders on the island of Cyprus.
IF President Glafkos Clerides of Cyprus, and the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Rauf Denktash, meet next Wednesday in New York for direct talks on an intercommunal settlement on this divided island - and it is not certain they will - the meeting will not be between "old friends", but long- standing antagonists.
Mr Denktash is due to visit Ankara tomorrow to discuss strategy ahead of planned peace talks in New York with Mr Clerides, officials said yesterday in the Turkish capital.
Amicable rather than inimical antagonists certainly, but men on opposite sides of a line all the same: a "Green Line" drawn on a map of Nicosia by a British army officer with a felt-tip pen during the 1963-1964 troubles, and extended over the island by the Turkish army when it invaded and occupied the north in 1974.
Pundits insist that if anyone can reach an accommodation on Cyprus, it will be these men. Several stories are given as reasons for the such optimism. The two are said to have been schoolmates at the English School in Nicosia but, in fact, Mr Clerides did not attend the English School, the elitist secondary educational institution of the British colonial administration. He went to the Pan-Cyprian Gymnasium where pupils raised the banner of freedom. Mr Denktash was instead an English School classmate of a younger Clerides cousin.
Mr Clerides was expelled a year before graduation because of anti- colonial activity and went to London to study law where another story has it that they met and became friends. In fact, Mr Clerides went to war and did not meet Mr Denktash while studying. According to Mr Clerides, they did not meet until 1950 when they were both back in Cyprus and in court, probably in Famagusta, where Mr Denktash was prosecuting and Mr Clerides (and his father) defending in a criminal case.
The tendency of the two to be on opposite sides intensified during the Greek Cypriot struggle to unite the island with Greece, waged by EOKA from 1955 to 1959. While Mr Clerides defended EOKA fighters in British courts, Mr Denktash prosecuted (until 1957) and then founded the Turkish Cypriot partitionist movement, TMT, his political power base and raisan d'etre.
In August 1960 the Greek Cypriots won independence rather than union with Greece (enosis) and Mr Clerides, then president of the House of Representatives, braved the fury of his own people to raise the white flag of the new bicommunal republic over the parliament, rather than the blue and white standard of "mother" Greece. Because this was perceived as surrender of the former Greek Cypriot goal of enosis, and the white flag seen as a flag of truce with the Turkish Cypriots, Mr Clerides gained the reputation of being a moderate.
A few months ago he permitted the exhumation of the remains of Mr Denktash's mother and sister, buried in the Muslim cemetery at Paphos and their transfer to the Turkish-occupied north. This gesture was seen by many Greek Cypriots as caving in to separatism.
In Greece, Mr Clerides's moderation is explained by the untrue rumour that he is married to a sister of Mr Denktash. Mr Clerides is in fact wed to the former Lila Erulkar, the daughter of a prominent Bombay doctor who was closely associated with Mahatma Gandhi's struggle for India's independence.
Mr Clerides met his future wife in London where she broadcast programmes for the BBC.
Perhaps this inheritance explains why Mr Clerides's only child, Kate, a member of parliament, is a leading advocate of intercommunal reconciliation and rapprochement. When, in March of this year, she married a man of similar inclination, the couple invited Turkish Cypriot friends to their wedding. But Mr Denktash did not permit them to cross the Green Line to attend. Despite the rebuff, Mr Clerides sent Mr Denktash a piece of cake.