"What was Papadopoulos� role in 1960s bicommunal talks?
Accussed of being both a Brit basher and schmoozing up to the government, MARTIN PACKARD attempts to put the record straight
First, honoured as I am to be referred to as a 'spook', I have never in fact been a spy or an 'intelligence agent'. While serving as a Royal Navy officer, I did have a three-year stint as intelligence adviser to NATO's Comedsoueast and to the UK's C-in-C Mediterranean, but I was acting simply as an analyst and the job didn't make me a member of the professional intelligence community. What it did do was give me access to diplomatic and intelligence reporting from throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, much of which I found to be either biased or inaccurate when it referred to areas of which I had personal knowledge.
Nor have I ever worked for the British Foreign Office, which will have been a matter of relief to that establishment.
I was sent by the Navy to Cyprus on January 6, 1964, solely because General Peter Young, who had just taken command of Joint Force (the original peacekeeping operation), had asked for the secondment of officers qualified as Greek-language interpreters, of whom I was one."
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