Two cabinet ministers from the socialist Edek party, the junior partner in the Cyprus government, will formally tender their resignations today. Their actions will be in protest at last week's decision to send controversial Russian S-300 missiles to Crete rather than deploy them on the island of Cyprus, as originally planned.
Turkey had threatened to "take out" the missiles as soon as they were installed, an action that could well have precipitated an all-out Greek-Turkish war.
The resignations of the Defence Minister, Mr Yiannakis Omirou, and the Education Minister, Mr Lycourgos Kappas, will force a cabinet reshuffle, but will not bring down the Greek Cypriot government as Cyprus has a presidential rather than a parliamentary system.
The missile fiasco has forced Greek Cypriots to reassess their relationship with "Mother Greece" and question the five-year-old "defence dogma" which was meant to provide Cyprus with security from Turkish attack.
One outspoken parliamentarian, Dr Marios Matsakis, said that the Greeks had "done this before", placed the Cypriots in a difficult situation and then abandoned them. In 1974 the coup against the Cyprus government mounted by Athens led to the invasion and occupation of the northern third of the island by Turkey.
Both Greek Cypriots and mainland Greeks are bitterly critical of the Cypriot President, Mr Glafkos Clerides, and the Greek Prime Minister, Mr Costas Simitis, for what editorialists termed "bowing to Turkish threats". This was done, they complained, without receiving guarantees that the Turkish side would either reduce the 35,000-strong mainland army in the north or return to UN-sponsored reunification talks.
The United States, the United Nations and the European Union have pledged that these two conditions would be met if the missiles were not deployed on Cyprus. But these pledges are unlikely to amount to more than empty promises.
On the military front Germany, which assumed the Presidency of the European Union on January 1st, promptly urged Turkey to decrease troop levels. But the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mr Rauf Denktash, replied that the missiles could not become "a bargaining counter for the reduction of Turkish soldiers" on the island.
Meanwhile, on the political front, instead of exerting pressure on the Turkish side to resume negotiations on the basis of the internationally accepted UN plan for a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation, the US has been promoting Mr Denktash's rejected formula for "a confederation of two equal states".
Last month the US ambassador to Cyprus, Mr Kenneth Brill, invited 30 influential Greek Cypriot politicians, lawyers and economists to meet Dr Daniel Elazar, an Israeli political scientist who, one participant told The Irish Times, attempted "to sell us confederation".
This seems to signify that the US has abandoned the mission of its chief trouble-shooter, Mr Richard Holbrooke, whose efforts to restart federation talks were rebuffed by Mr Denktash last year. In the wake of the missile fiasco, prospects for a Cyprus settlement seem poorer than ever.
