Description
Cyprus 1957-1963 examines the issue of seperate municipalities, a microcosm of the Cyprus problem, during the process of decolonization. The practical difficulties of the prescribed arrangements and the pressures of intracommunal domestic politics, which were exacerbated by an injection of cold war priorities and misleading diplomatic initiatives, contributed to the failure to find a mutually acceptable formula. A series of attempts to do so exposed the more substantial differences regarding sovereingty and the limitations on the political power of the majority. The failure to resolve the municipal issue was, therefore, bound to contain the seeds of the unraveling of the Zurich and London Agreements by which Cyprus had gained its precarious independence.
