"There Might Be a Chance"

For the first time since it was built four years ago, the costly three-room presidential suite at the Army's Walter Reed Hospital in Washington had an occupant. But the worried face that peeked from between the presidential sheets was not Harry Truman's, but Premier Mossadegh's. By Truman's special invitation, the Iranian Premier was resting up after his train ride from New York to Washington. He had got off the train slowly, hanging heavily on his ambassador's arm. But, spotting Dean Acheson waiting for him at the train gate, Mossadegh- disengaged his arm and ran the last 15 feet with the vigor of a youngster.

Acheson and two State Department aides later, visited Mossadegh's flower-decked bedside to urge him to reopen oil talks with Great Britain.. President Truman added his urgings at a Blair House luncheon for Mossadegh.

With Iran's oil flow shut off for the past three months, and his nation faced with economic danger, Mossadegh seemed willing to listen. He summoned. his top oil adviser, Kazem Hassibi, from Teheran. Said Hassibi, on arriving in New York: "My presence here is some indication that there might be a chance for a settlement. I hope so."

Officially, the U.S. was playing the role of "honest broker" between Iran and Britain-a role which pleased neither. Unofficially, the State Department talked of a settlement based on full acceptance of Iran's nationalization laws. That would mean final liquidation of the old Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.'s holdings, with compensation for British properties already seized. The British would market Iranian oil at prices sufficient to assure Britain a reasonable profit. A "neutral" manager under Iranian government control would run the Abadan refinery with an international staff of Dutch, American and other technicians, including British.

Whether either Mossadegh or Winston

Churchill would accept such a scheme remained to be seen. But Mossadegh showed willingness to stay on in Washington to negotiate, and Anthony Eden, in his first act as Foreign Secretary, called home Ambassador Sir Francis Shepherd from Teheran to talk things over. In Teheran, after the British elections, crowds tore down the street signs on Churchill Avenue. The government ordered them back up, and blamed the whole thing on the outlawed Communist Tudeh Party.

-Who asked the White House to quit spelling it Mosadeq.

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