ANKARA: Turkish Foreign Minister Ihsan Sabri Caglayangil said last night [Feb 7] there was a possibility of war between Turkey and Greece, and that Turkey had taken all precautions.

The Foreign Minister told the Senate during a debate on his Ministry’s Budget that the situation had been caused by the communiqué issued in Athens by President Makarios of Cyprus and the Greek Government.

The communiqué said Greece and Cyprus had agreed that the only solution to the Cyprus problem was ENOSIS — union of Cyprus with Greece.

Mr Caglayangil said: “The question of Cyprus has taken the appearance of leading Turkey to a war at a moment she does not wish, and in spite of Turkey wanting peace more than anyone else.”

A Greek Government spokesman said in Athens last night Foreign Minister Elias Tsirimokos was studying a strongly worded Turkish note delivered on Saturday. The note is believed to have protested against the communiqué.

[Meanwhile, as reported by agencies from Jodrell Bank, England,] “Luna-9”, the Soviet lunar probe which sent back the first close-up landscape photos of the moon, has finally fallen silent it was announced here today [Feb 8].

“We have heard the last of Luna Nine,” said Sir Bernard Lovell, Director of the Jodrell Bank observatory, whose giant radio telescope has been monitoring the probe’s transmissions since it landed on the moon last Thursday.

Sir Bernard, who called the Soviet achievement “a really magnificent feat,” predicted that the Russians might send a manned spacecraft to orbit the moon late this year or early in 1967.

“I would certainly expect, possibly later this year or early next year, a circumnavigation of the moon by men without landing,” he said, adding that the Russians might first land — within the next few months — a robot tractor and animals. He also castigated the Russians and the Americans for competing in a race to the moon. He said the competition arose from depths of human stupidity.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2016