202. Message From the Soviet Leadership to the U.S. Leadership1

In addition to our yesterday’s communication2 L. I. Brezhnev asks to bring to the President’s attention the following.

As is known the complex situation on and around Cyprus existed for many years. In the long run the situation there has to a certain degree stabilized. And not the last role in it has played an understanding between the Soviet Union and the United States—and among many other countries, including Turkey—that the interests of Cypriot people and tranquility in this area as a whole is served by the independence and sovereignty of Cyprus.

However the latest events demonstrated that such state of affairs is not to the liking of those who harboured plans of the so-called enosis, which in fact is an annexation of Cyprus.

But a lawful question arises: what policy should triumph—the policy of peace, which gives to the Cypriot people themselves the possibility to govern their internal affairs, the policy which was not once approved by the United Nations of which Cyprus is a member, or a policy directed at defying all those principles?

We firmly believe that it is not the rifle, which came from Greece, that should write the laws for the Cypriot people. Only the people themselves can and should write their laws.

Meanwhile in the eyes of all the world the Athens Government through their military personnel, which turned up on Cyprus, is waging a criminal act of flagrant interference in the internal affairs of that country, having staged a military coup against the lawful government of the Republic headed by President Makarios.

We are convinced that elementary justice demands from the Soviet Union, the United States, other major powers and generally from all countries to do their say—and if necessary to do more than that—to put an end to the military interference of Greece in the affairs of Cyprus.

We believe that President Nixon and the Government of the United States, proceeding from the general course towards relaxation of international tension, adherence to which by both the USSR and the US was once again demonstrated recently during the Soviet-American [Page 1025] summit meeting, will take the line corresponding to the interests of the Cypriot people and the interests of peace.

Among the main and most urgent tasks now is the adoption by the Security Council of a decision on an immediate withdrawal of Greek military personnel from Cyprus and on the stopping of the interference by Greece in the internal affairs of Cyprus.3

In this very spirit we are giving instruction to the Soviet Representative in the Security Council, and we would like to hope that the U.S. Representative in the Council will be given an instruction to adhere to the same line.

  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, Kissinger Office Files, Box 70, Country Files—Europe—USSR, Dobrynin/Kissinger, Vol. 24. No classification marking. This message is the second of two attachments to Vorontsov’s covering memorandum to Eagleburger; see footnote 1, Document 201.
  2. Document 201.
  3. Security Council Resolution 353 was adopted unanimously on July 20. For the full text, see Yearbook of the United Nations, 1974, p. 291.