Time & Place

High above Manhattan's Park Avenue, the Big Four foreign ministers met last week to talk about the Geneva meeting. Russia's Foreign Minister Molotov joined the Westerners in John Foster Dulles' Waldorf-Astoria Tower suite and came to quick agreement on Geneva's procedures and duration (about three weeks). It was smooth, pleasant, almost routine. The diplomats' minds were on other things.

Though the subject was not remotely on the agenda, Britain's Harold Macmillan abruptly blurted out what was preoccupying the West. If Russia is sincerely trying to ease world tensions, Macmillan demanded of Molotov, why is Russia's satellite Czechoslovakia selling arms to Egypt? Turning on his best wide-eyed look, Molotov professed to know nothing about it.

For months the Western allies, concerned with mortising Western Germany into the NATO ramparts, had given little if any thought to the southern end of those ramparts. Then, suddenly, the whole Middle East seemed in jeopardy.

Nasser's deal with Communist Czechoslovakia (see below) involved more than jet planes, tanks, and heavy artillery to upset the carefully fostered balance of arms the West had maintained between Egypt and Israel. It involved a possible intrusion of serious Communist influence into a part of the world dominated long, if unsurely, by the West. There was supposed to be a second line of defense against such an occurrence--the partnership of Turkey and Greece within the NATO alliance. But by last week, that partnership was itself in danger of disintegration. Far from acting like NATO allies, the Greeks and Turks were bitterly at odds over Cyprus. Turkey, whose 440,000-man army is the West's strongest bulwark in the area, was so badly in debt that last summer private oil companies cut off its supplies until the government pays in cash. Cyprus itself, linchpin of the NATO area defense, was seething with pent-up troubles which the Greek radio, speaking for a shaky government, urged on in the apparent hope that recriminations against Britain and the U.S. would alleviate discontent at home.

To check the spread of trouble, Washington last week sent one of its best troubleshooters to warn Nasser against the Communists' poisoned apples. Britain sent its top soldier to impose order on its East Mediterranean bastion (see below). Russia, meanwhile, sent a polite note to all three Western powers to express its belief that any nation can buy weapons wherever it pleases. To prove its point, Russia already was busy offering its wares to Syria and Saudi Arabia. In other words, this talk of disarmament and the "spirit of Geneva" was all right in its place and time--but not in the Middle East while the other fellow's back is turned.

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