I join with others in welcoming the cessation of hostilities. I should like, first, to pay the warmest possible tribute to the Secretary of State for his determined, healing and creative part in reaching the agreement. I welcome also the action of the Greek and Turkish Governments. Their statesmanship at the conference, has been outstanding. The new Greek Government were in a particularly difficult position just having come into power. Then I should like to join others in a warm tribute to our Armed Services and to our High Commissioner. It has been a multilateral effort that has produced a ceasefire.

The agreement signed yesterday will, I hope, lead to a longer-term settlement and allow the people of Cyprus to live alongside each other with much less fear of communal clashes. But this, as the Secretary of State said, is only a beginning. I wish him success in the resumed negotiations on 8th August and, later, when the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities are brought in. He will then find there two of my old friends, Glafkos Clerides and Rauf Denktash, both clear-sighted and determined leaders who care for Cyprus as a whole as well as for their own communities.

I was involved in the administration of Cyprus for five years, from 1955 to 1960, and I should like to make only a few points at this early stage. The ceasefire agreement points to separate rule in the new Turkish and Greek sectors within an independent and unitary Cyprus republic. This could—and I pray it will—lead to a more stable political future. It is difficult, at this stage, to see far ahead. but, in my view, an arrangement on these lines offers better prospects than the alternative of outright partition, which would involve much suffering through major movements of population.

But one point is already clear. The members of the Turkish Cypriot community could not thrive on the land now occupied by Turkish troops. It contains very little of the good farming land. The detailed settlement that has yet to be worked out will, as I see it, leave Turks in the Greek sector free to live, farm and trade there, and Greeks in the new Turkish sector free to do the same.

But such an arrangement will call for great tolerance and care by the authorities in each area for the other communities under their administration. We have seen in Ulster, which is a different case, how hard it is to achieve this tolerance. But we must await further details.

As to the future rôle of the United Nations forces, which have already achieved so much in Cyprus, it is clear that they will be required for many years to come to ensure that border incidents between the two sectors are kept to a minimum and to help people to adjust to the new situation after great suffering on both sides.

In the first settlement of 1960, the constitutional arrangements for a republic were based on the Zurich Agreement between Greece and Turkey, while Britain retained two sovereign base areas. These sovereign base areas have been of great value to Western defence, as has been recognised by all our Western allies. They have been of value also to our Armed Services for training purposes and for supporting the United Nations forces, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) made clear in his Opening Speech—and I congratulate him on choosing this subject for his Adjournment Debate.

There have also been two side benefits of the sovereign base area. First, in the emergency they have helped to calm the situation and to reduce the threat of war between Greece and Turkey. They have greatly reduced human suffering and have provided a refuge for British residents, for isolated Greek and Turkish groups under threat of massacre, and for the thousands of tourists from all nations scattered all over the island. They have also been of great benefit to the economy of Cyprus. The wages paid out in the sovereign base areas have been an important contribution to the economy of Cyprus.

My hope is that with the continuing good will of Greece and Turkey, and the Cyprus communities, these bases will be maintained for many years ahead until Western democracy is no longer under threat in that region.