Greek Cypriot statesman who worked towards a settlement for the divided island of Cyprus
Cyprus is a speck of a nation with a population of barely one million. But geography, history and chance have combined to give it a disproportionate importance in world affairs. Over the years, it has risen to the challenge of its role by producing politicians of a stature to hold their own among representatives of much bigger and stronger countries. Glafcos Clerides, who has died aged 94, was the outstanding example – a local nationalist who, at an comparatively early stage in his political career, won the right to be considered a statesman.
In a sense, it was his ability to see clearly the bigger issues that was his tragedy. He grasped – more than a decade before the majority of his fellow Greek Cypriots – the true implications of Turkey's invasion of the island in 1974. But he was unable to convert the electorate to his view that half a loaf was better than none, and paid for his beliefs with a long stretch in the political wilderness.
Ironically, the Turkish Cypriots' subsequent refusal to accept what he regarded as manifestly reasonable proposals turned Clerides from a conciliator into a rejectionist. His two terms as president, from 1993 until 2003, will be remembered as a period of fruitless dialogue and increased tensions between the two communities. But it was also during Clerides's presidency that the negotiations for Cyprus to join the European Union were completed.
Clerides was born in Nicosia, the son of a distinguished barrister, and went on to become a lawyer himself. But before starting his career, he served in the RAF during the second world war. His bomber was shot down over Hamburg in 1942 and he spent the rest of the conflict as a prisoner of war. It was as a law student in London after the war that he met and married his Indian-born wife, Lila, who was then working for the BBC.
In 1951, not long after the birth of their only child, Katy, Clerides returned to Cyprus to practise law. He always denied being a member of the Eoka guerrilla movement, but was active in the independence struggle (a slight misnomer in the case of the Greek Cypriots, most of whom actually wanted union or enosis with Greece).
By the time independence was in sight, Clerides's credentials both as a lawyer and as a nationalist were sufficiently well-established for him to be appointed justice minister in the transitional period from British colonial rule. In July 1960, he was elected to the House of Representatives and served as its president or speaker until 1976.
The years following independence saw the collapse into violence of the dream of a Cyprus in which Greeks and Turks could co-exist under a complex set of power-sharing arrangements. By 1968, the two communities were deeply divided on a wide range of constitutional issues.
In May that year, Clerides was asked by President Makarios to represent the Greek Cypriot side in what was to be the first of many rounds of talks with the then Turkish Cypriot number two, Rauf Denktash. The two men had been law students together in London, and throughout their lengthy and tortuous dealings they retained an affectionate, if wary, respect for one another.
There were obvious similarities between them. They were both rotund, genial and engagingly wily. But despite the hopes repeatedly attached to it, the long-running Clerides and Denktash show never delivered peace, and it has been argued that it was a mistake for each side to have put up such an able lawyer.
The other view, not necessarily incompatible, is that Clerides was repeatedly held back from a compromise by Makarios. Certainly, by the end of the first set of talks, which dragged on until 1974, Clerides would have been willing to accept local autonomy, which at that time was the Turkish Cypriots' principal demand.
Three months after the talks collapsed, disaster struck. The Greek National Guard on the island, backed by the junta in Athens, staged a coup with the totally unrealistic aim of forcing enosis. A former Eoka gunman, Nicos Sampson, was appointed president and Turkey invaded to prevent what many Turks and Turkish Cypriots feared would be a bloodbath.
Sampson resigned three days after the Turkish troops landed, and Clerides was made acting president. A further round of talks with Denktash, by then the leader of his community, in Geneva failed to prevent the Turkish forces from renewing their offensive and seizing the whole of the north.
After Makarios's return, Clerides resumed his role as speaker of the house and negotiator in chief. He talked with Denktash in Vienna in January 1975, in New York in September 1975 and later Cyprus itself. But all to no avail.
Clerides himself became convinced that the Greek Cypriots could never get back more than a part of the north and he was ready to compromise on the Turkish Cypriots' demands for a bi-zonal solution, in return for the cession of territory. Few others in the south wanted to face up to the ugly reality, though, and Makarios never felt able or willing to give Clerides the backing he needed.
In April 1976, Clerides resigned in despair from his post as negotiator. Politically, his departure cost him dear. At the elections in the Greek Cypriot area that year, his recently founded Democratic Rally party (DISY) failed to win a single seat.
The death of Makarios in 1977 and his replacement by Spyros Kyprianou marked the start of a period in which the Greek Cypriot side gradually hardened its position. Clerides's political fortunes improved at the 1981 general election when his right-wing party took 12 of the 35 Greek Cypriot seats in the House of Representatives. But he failed to wrest the presidency from Kyprianou two years later and, when Kyprianou's grip on power was finally loosened in 1988, it was the communist-backed millionaire Georghios Vassiliou, and not Clerides, who replaced him as head of state.
Vassiliou's victory represented a defeat for the fruitless, hardline attitudes of the Kyprianou era. It marked a return to sort of the flexibility that had characterised Clerides's approach in the mid-70s.
But by the time he entered his second presidential campaign, Clerides himself had changed. He now, for example, favoured an increase in Greece's military presence as a way of strengthening the Greek Cypriots' bargaining position and forcing a solution.
By the time he entered his third presidential campaign, in 1993, it was as the hardline challenger. His victory, by a margin of just 0.6 per cent of the vote, was greeted with misgivings by many international diplomats who would have been overjoyed to see him as head of state a decade and a half earlier.
Since the Turks and Turkish Cypriots also now represented vastly more intransigent positions – to the extent of being censured by the UN secretary general for their obstructiveness – it may be wondered whether the shades of dissimilarity in Clerides's position made a jot of difference. At all events, his presidency did not bring the island any nearer a settlement.
On the contrary, there were only the most desultory of inter-communal talks, and more than one clash between Greek Cypriot demonstrators and Turkish forces. In 1996, two demonstrators were killed within a few days of each other.
At the same time, the tensions between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus soared. Yet, somehow, throughout it all, Clerides and Denktash managed to keep intact their mutual respect and a wicked, shared sense of humour. The Cyprus Mail recalled that in 2003, when his eternal sparring partner was in hospital after a serious operation, Clerides rang him up.
He asked Denktash how he was and the Turkish Cypriot leader said "Glafcos, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy", to which Clerides replied "thank you, Rauf".
Clerides's wife died in 2007. He is survived by his daughter.
• Glafcos Clerides, politician, born 24 April 1919; died 15 November 2013
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