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DE RUEHNC #0052/01 0161526
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 161526Z JAN 07
FM AMEMBASSY NICOSIA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 7437
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE
RUEHLB/AMEMBASSY BEIRUT IMMEDIATE 4245
RUEHBS/USEU BRUSSELS IMMEDIATE
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK IMMEDIATE 0749

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 NICOSIA 000052 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/SE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL UNFICYP PHUM PREF TU CY
SUBJECT: ASSIMILATION, AGING THREATEN CYPRUS MARONITES 
 
REF: 06 NICOSIA 2051 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY:  The Maronite community -- self-described as 
6,000-strong but likely half that -- enjoys "official 
religious group" status under Cyprus's 1960 constitution. 
Concentrated historically in four villages south and west of 
Kyrenia, the Catholic Maronites endured near-total 
dislocation after the 1974 conflict; just 125 remain in the 
area now administered by Turkish Cypriots.  Community leader 
Antonis Hajiroussos, who holds a non-voting seat in the 
Republic of Cyprus Parliament, briefed Emboffs January 11 on 
problems facing his community and its prospects for the 
future.  In the Maronite enclaves north of the Green Line, 
the situation resembles that of their Greek Cypriot 
counterparts in the Karpass Peninsula (Reftel):  some soon 
will vanish, while those hamlets with a critical mass of 
inhabitants should limp on, at least medium-term. 
Demographics is catching up, however, as average inhabitant 
age nears 75.  Maronite leaders have concentrated their 
attention on lobbying Turkish Cypriot authorities to 
liberalize "visitation" rights for refugees residing in the 
south, and on pressuring the Turkish Army to relocate 
military facilities from the villages.  Their entreaties thus 
far have received only lip service, however. 
 
¶2.  In the RoC-controlled areas, Hajiroussos revealed, 
Maronites long ago had abandoned agriculture for trades, 
small business, and the professions, many becoming 
prosperous.  They had enjoyed less success in government, 
politics and big business, he lamented, owing to Greek 
Cypriot clannishness.  Assimilation into the dominant Greek 
Orthodox community threatened his compatriots, Hajiroussos 
worried, with mixed marriages now the norm.  Politically, 
Maronites remained solidly conservative, with left-wing AKEL 
winning only 10 percent support.  No group backed 
rapprochement and a Cyprus solution more fervently than the 
Maronites, Hajiroussos asserted.  As such, the slow pace of 
CyProb negotiations and worsening climate surrounding 
bi-communality troubled his community greatly.  END SUMMARY. 
 
------------------------------ 
Island More than Greeks, Turks 
------------------------------ 
 
¶3.  The Maronite community, whose roots lie in neighboring 
Lebanon, traces its arrival on Cyprus to 900 AD.  "Catholics 
of the Oriental Rite," they fall hierarchically under the 
direction of the Patriarch of Antioch (Lebanon) and the Pope 
in Rome.  Nearly all members speak Greek as their first 
language and are conversant in a Cypriot Arabic dialect; 
priests conduct their liturgy in Aramaic, however, the 
language of Jesus.  Official Maronite literature claims the 
community's size reached 60,000 "at some stage" and now 
numbers 6,000; most demographers claim 3,500 a more realistic 
figure.  Prior to the conflict of 1974, nearly all Maronites 
practiced agriculture and lived in four villages in northwest 
Cyprus:  Asomatos, Ayia Marina, Karpasia, and Kormakitis. 
 
¶4.  Cyprus's 1960 constitution recognized the Maronites, 
along with the Armenians and Latins, as "official" religious 
groups and gave them the option of aligning with either the 
Greek or Turkish communities for voting purposes.  Primarily 
for religious and linguistic reasons -- although economics 
too played a part -- all chose to side with the more numerous 
Greeks.  As a result of the 1974 conflict and subsequent 
demarcation of the cease-fire line, however, all four 
Maronite villages fell under the control of the Turkish 
Cypriot "state."  Most residents relocated south in the 
negotiated population exchanges which followed, establishing 
refugee communities in Nicosia and second-city Limassol. 
Some 250 Maronite villagers, mainly elderly, chose to remain 
in the north; predictably, their numbers are dwindling. 
 
------------------ 
Leader Reaches Out 
------------------ 
 
¶5.  Maronites in the government-controlled area enjoy 
expanded voting rights, electing both regional 
parliamentarians and a non-voting MP who represents the 
community.  The MP currently encumbering the latter position, 
Antonis Hajiroussos, invited Poloffs to a January 11 
roundtable to discuss his community's plight and its hopes 
for a brighter future.  Attending as well were prominent 
Maronite Petros Markou, head of the Cypriot Consumers' 
Association, and a smattering of village "mukhtars" 
(essentially, small-town mayors). 
 
 
NICOSIA 00000052  002 OF 004 
 
 
¶6.  No group had suffered a harsher fate than the Maronites 
as a result of the 1974 conflict and de facto division of 
Cyprus, Hajiroussos argued.  Members of the community, "per 
capita, once the largest landholders on the island," had had 
to abandon fertile fields and a pastoral lifestyle for the 
concrete of Nicosia and Limassol.  Only the old and infirm 
had remained behind.  Currently, just 160 Maronites inhabited 
the villages in the Turkish Cypriot-controlled area, he 
revealed, and all depended on RoC transfer payments to 
survive.  While T/C-imposed restrictions on movement had 
diminished in recent years and relations with the larger 
community were cordial, the situation was far from perfect. 
 
------------------------------------- 
Village-by-village:  Bigger is Better 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶7.  Just three elderly Maronites, all women over 80, 
inhabited Asomatos, once a thriving village of 500 some 
twenty-five kilometers southwest of Kyrenia.  Visitors were 
few, arriving usually on Sunday for the weekly mass.  The 
Turkish Army long ago had commandeered unoccupied residences 
in Asomatos for officers' housing, Hajiroussos claimed, but 
many former Maronite homes remained vacant.  Church and 
community leaders had requested UNFICYP's assistance in two 
matters:  first, in petitioning the Army to relocate its 
forces to a neighboring T/C village, and second, in obtaining 
permission for former Maronite villagers, now resident in the 
south, to renovate their ancestral properties for 
vacation/weekend homes.  Turkish Cypriot leaders had agreed 
in principle to meet the demands, Hajiroussos and Markou 
noted, but taken no action.  Frustrated, the Cypriot 
Maronites had pressed their counterparts in Lebanon to raise 
the matter with visiting Turkish PM Erdogan, to no avail. 
Hajiroussos hoped the Embassy, too, might utilize its good 
offices on the Maronites' behalf. 
 
¶8.  Conditions were bleakest in Ayia Marina, the southernmost 
Maronite village.  The site of a large Turkish Army camp that 
housed heavy weapons, the village was fully off-limits, even 
to UNFICYP blue-berets.  Its absentee mukhtar realized that 
hopes to dislodge the Army from Ayia Marina looked scant.  He 
had lowered his aim, however, to winning blanket approval to 
open the village church for mass on its holy day, July 17. 
For assistance, Maronite leaders had petitioned not just 
UNFICYP but also Turkish Cypriot politician Serdar Denktash, 
owing to prior, positive dealings with the now-in-opposition 
politician.  (NOTE:  Under the current SOP, Christian leaders 
wishing to celebrate mass at churches in the Turkish 
Cypriot-administered area must solicit permission from "TRNC" 
authorities on a per occurrence basis.  Maronites sought and 
received said authorization in July 2006, eventually 
conducting the first service in Ayia Marina in 33 years.  END 
NOTE.)  In response to Emboffs' inquiries regarding possible 
Maronite usage of the European Court of Human Rights in 
seeking property reinstatement, Hajiroussos claimed his flock 
had chosen not to take that route, believing it could only 
incense the majority T/C community and thus make life for the 
enclaved more difficult. 
¶9.  Twelve elderly Maronites called Karpasia home, its 
mukhtar declared.  Six others resided half-time in the 
village, located five kilometers west of Asomatos.  The 
Turkish Army had raised a large camp on Maronite land outside 
Karpasia, and officers were inhabiting 18 houses -- "the 
nicest," Markou added.  Again via UNFICYP, Maronite officials 
were petitioning the Turks to redeploy their forces and allow 
former villagers to renovate their ancestral homes.  In other 
parts of Karpasia, pre-1974 residents had done just that, and 
crossed north regularly for weekend and holiday stays. 
Masses occurred weekly, the elder revealed. 
 
¶10.  With 1100 residents Kormakitis was, in the pre-1974 
period, the largest of the ancestral Maronite villages.  It 
has padded its advantage with time; currently, 108 Maronites 
reside there, and it hosts the only functioning, albeit 
small, Maronite businesses (mainly family restaurants.) 
"Most inhabitants are afraid to work," Hajiroussos claimed. 
When pressed, he explained that Turkish Cypriots had not 
forbidden the Maronites from opening businesses.  Rather, the 
villagers feared that, in meeting the regulatory requirements 
of the "state," they might somehow jeopardize their standing 
in the government-controlled areas.  Karpasia's mukhtar 
called relations between Maronites and Turkish Cypriots 
"excellent."  They were long-time neighbors, after all; 
unlike in the Karpass Peninsula, home to the enclaved Greek 
Cypriots, the Maronite areas hosted relatively few mainland 
Turk newcomers. 
 
 
NICOSIA 00000052  003 OF 004 
 
 
¶11.  Help for enclaved Maronites might be imminent, 
Hajiroussos hoped.  European Union assistance funds for the 
Turkish Cypriot areas would soon start flowing, and the 
community hoped to capture a portion of the 259 million euro 
allotment to improve infrastructure in their villages.  The 
MP had secured a January 11 appointment with EU Head of 
Office Alain Botherel and intended to pitch possible 
proposals.  Hajiroussos claimed the EU official had welcomed 
Maronite interest. 
 
------------------------- 
In the south, a Mixed Bag 
------------------------- 
 
¶12.  Ninety-eight percent of Maronites had abandoned their 
villages in the population exchanges that followed the 1974 
conflict.  Many had emigrated to Australia and the UK, but 
most settled in Nicosia and Limassol.  Deprived of their 
properties and knowing only agriculture, they endured great 
difficulties in the early years, Hajiroussos explained. 
Buoying the community, however, was its appetite for 
education.  "We are among the best educated Cypriots," the MP 
exclaimed, citing his community's success in law, medicine, 
and other professions.  Maronites also made excellent small 
businessman.  His compatriots had failed to break into 
government, politics, or corporations in numbers commensurate 
to their population, however.  Greek Cypriot clannishness 
deserved blame, Hajiroussos ventured, and exhortations of 
"Don't vote for him, he's a Maronite" were not just relics of 
the past.  Since 1974, only two had won election to 
Parliament as voting members, and none had headed ministries. 
 
¶13.  Politics in the community tilted right, Hajiroussos and 
Markou disclosed.  Maronites fervently supported former 
President Glafkos Clerides, for example, and his Democratic 
Rally (DISY) party.  DISY remained the institution of choice 
for 60 percent of Maronites, while 30 percent supported 
centrist DIKO, the party of RoC President Tassos 
Papadopoulos.  AKEL, Cyprus's communist party and the 
nation's largest, had won little Maronite support despite 
targeting the group for recruitment.  Only 10 percent of the 
group voted AKEL, they claimed. 
 
¶14.  Maronite leaders fretted over possible assimilation into 
the majority Greek Cypriot group, the MP divulged. 
Maintaining a feeling of community, of separateness, was easy 
in small villages, but not so in Nicosia or Limassol.  Most 
Maronites in the south attended Greek Cypriot schools, 
Hajiroussos explained, although the RoC funded a school for 
Catholics and paid small stipends to Maronite parents wishing 
to send their children to private academies.  Some 80 percent 
of Maronites were marrying outside their community, he added. 
 While church canons stipulated that male offspring acquired 
Maronite status at birth, the MP worried that future 
generations might lose ties to their faith and clan. 
 
¶15.  A planned shift in RoC policy might also work to 
assimilate the Maronites, Hajiroussos lamented.  From the 
time of Archbishop Makarios, Cypriot laws had exempted 
community youth from military service.  "For obvious 
reasons," the parliamentarian chuckled, "as it's the GREEK 
CYPRIOT National Guard."  GCNG soldiers swore an oath to 
Hellenism and the Orthodox Church, something no Maronite (or 
Armenian or Latin, for that matter) should be asked to do. 
 
¶16.  Commenting on same-day media accounts that noted a 
change was imminent, in part due to difficulties enlisting 
sufficient numbers but also to Greek Cypriots' claims of 
discrimination, Hajiroussos summarized his January 10 
conversation with Defense Ministry Permanent Secretary Petros 
Kareklas.  Maronites were not averse to military service, he 
had told Kareklas.  Further as residents of Cyprus who 
derived benefits from citizenship, they owed the nation 
plenty.  But for reasons noted above, service in the National 
Guard was anathema to the religious group.  His arguments had 
fallen on deaf ears with the PermSec, however.  "How will our 
young men help fill the staffing gap?" Hajiroussos wondered, 
as only 30-40 reached draft age every year. 
 
¶17.  Turning to the broader Cyprus Problem, Hajiroussos and 
Markou fretted over growing discord between Turkish and Greek 
Cypriots.  Maronites, they claimed, remained solidly 
pro-solution.  "Ninety-five percent of us supported the Annan 
Plan," the MP asserted, regardless of the fact that much 
Maronite land would have fallen in the T/C federated state. 
Close, stable relations between the two groups benefited his 
community enormously, while friction did the opposite. 
Maronites would continue to support efforts to reunite the 
 
NICOSIA 00000052  004 OF 004 
 
 
island, he concluded. 
 
--------------------------------- 
Hopes Don't Seem Great for Future 
--------------------------------- 
 
¶18.  COMMENT:  Superficially, the Maronite enclaved in 
northwest Cyprus resemble closely their Greek Cypriot 
counterparts in the Karpass Peninsula.  Both inhabit a 
handful of villages smack-dab in "enemy" territory, featuring 
hamlets with single-digit, elderly populations.  Economic 
prospects for residents in each are slim, and neither ethnic 
community could survive without RoC transfer payments and UN 
largesse.  In actuality, however, the Maronites' plight in 
the north is far graver.  Demographics factor greatly:  while 
primary and secondary schools service some 50 G/C youth in 
Rizokarpasso (Reftel), the school-age population in the 
Maronite villages is exactly zero.  Politics also plays a 
part.  While the RoC and Greek Cypriots writ large view the 
Karpass enclaved as the last bastion of Hellenism in the 
Turkish-occupied north, endeavoring to see them flourish, 
they pay less attention to the Maronites, whom some G/Cs 
consider quasi-collaborators (owing to the "freedoms" the 
community enjoys under T/C rule, in comparison to the 
enclaved Greeks).  Barring a major and unforeseen 
liberalization in Turkish Cypriot relocation regulations -- 
or great leaps in geriatric care -- this minority's presence 
in the north seems doomed to become historical. 
 
¶19.  Via an ambitious program of church building and 
religious/ethnocentric education, Maronites in the 
government-controlled are attempting to avoid a similar fate, 
benefiting greatly from the protected status Cyprus's 1960 
constitution awarded.  We doubt, however, the community will 
prove able to maintain such privileges indefinitely, with 
demographics again to blame.  At the time of independence, 
the three religious groups comprised 4.7 percent of the 
island's population, a not insignificant number.  Owing to 
assimilation, greater fecundity of the majority G/C 
population, and growing immigration from Asia and eastern 
Europe, the picture in the government-controlled areas has 
changed dramatically.  Even their own, optimistic demographic 
data, for example, show their portion has fallen to less than 
half the earlier figure.  Throw in the north, with its 
100,000-plus mainland Turkish settlers, and the Maronites 
represent at best one percent of the island's population. 
Securing continued protected status under any envisionable 
"United Cyprus Republic" would seem to require political 
influence they just don't have.  END COMMENT. 
SCHLICHER