"Special report: politics past
From the national archives
Tentative plans for a Cypriot intervention
Owen Bowcott
Saturday January 1, 2005
The Guardian
Plans for British military intervention in the civil war in Cyprus involving a naval flotilla and 15,000 soldiers were drawn up hastily on the instructions of the prime minister, Harold Wilson.
The aim was to restore the Cypriot president, Archbishop Makarios, who had been deposed by a coup led by officers supporting the Greek military junta in Athens.
News of the coup on July 15 1974 provoked a flurry of diplomatic contacts in which the Russians sought assurances that the situation would not be allowed to escalate into an international crisis. "
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