Canadian participation in UNFICYP beneficial to Cyprus and Canada
A deep sense of duty has always rested close to the core of Canada’s Cyprus commitment, said Greg Donaghy, a special scientist on history and diplomacy at the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in a lecture in Nicosia on the 50 years of the Canadian peacekeeping force in Cyprus.
As he explained a responsible search for global order drew Canada to the Eastern Mediterranean in 1964, and kept it there.
“Through 59 troop rotations, 29,000 troops, and 28 killed, successive Canadian governments held firm for thirty years. UNFICYP was good for Cyprus, but it was also good for Canada, advancing its NATO and UN objectives, while reflecting legitimate political interests and values”, he said.
He added that when this balance shifted with the end of the Cold War, Canada’s stake in Cyprus diminished sharply.
“This was not, as some have complained, evidence that Canadians had “lost our place in the world,” or that Canada was “out of the game.” Rather, the Cyprus experience reminds us that Canadian diplomacy so often combined an idealist grasp of the desirable with a realist appreciation of the possible. And that is no bad thing”, he pointed out.
The speaker made an historical review of the participation of Canada in UNFICYP from 1964, when Canada’s foreign minister was searching a new role for his country’s foreign policy and embraced UN peacekeeping, until 1993 when most Canadians left Cyprus when the country’s former Foreign Minister, Joe Clark, hung on as the secretary-general’s special representative and a single soldier served (and continues to serve) with UNFICYP.
He referred to how Canadian policy-makers campaigned hard for financial reform and championed plans to restructure UNFICYP as a much smaller observer force in 1974, in 1978, and again, twice, in the 1980s and noted that their efforts were fruitless, dismissed by force commanders and UN experts as too risky, or opposed by Security Council members France and the Soviet Union, both anxious to avoid absorbing UNFICYP costs.
He referred to the frustration of Canada when they could not see a negotiated settlement and to the reason that made Canada stay in UNFICYP. The most important was the fact that the UN mission worked, preserving the stability that was seen as the vital precondition for inter-communal talks and an eventual settlement.
He also referred to the fighting in 1974 when Turkish troops invaded Cyprus, which left two Canadians dead and 17 wounded, that fuelled doubts in Canada about the mission.
Furthermore as Donaghy explained, Liberal and Conservative governments alike backed the UN mission because it clearly advanced Canada’s foreign policy interests in NATO, at the UN, and in a number of bilateral settings. As a NATO ally, Canada had an obvious Cold War stake in defusing tensions between Greece and Turkey, stabilizing and reinforcing the alliance’s “sensitive southern flank.”
“This was more important than ever following the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, when instability through an “arc of crisis” in the Eastern Mediterranean might limit US access to bases in Greece and to Turkish airspace”, he said.
Defence policy officials embraced UNFICYP as one bright spot in Ottawa’s otherwise lacklustre performance in NATO under Trudeau. A retreat from Cyprus would surely strain relations with Washington and London, as well as with Canada’s smaller NATO allies, who might be obliged to pick up the slack.
Donaghy stressed that the force proved a useful instrument as well for managing bilateral relations with Greece and Turkey, providing a “logical basis” for Canada to avoid taking sides in the tricky dispute on the grounds that this might impair its impartiality.
He talked about domestic reasons to stay such as the influx of Greek immigrants beginning with a strong stake in Cyprus.
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