Diplomats at Work

While the U.S. was formulating its new policy for the Middle East, the State Department was busy hammering away at stubborn old problems. Last week it:

P: Rejected a Soviet proposal, contained in a November letter from Bulganin to President Eisenhower, for a five-power (U.S., U.S.S.R., U.K., France, India) "summit" conference on disarmament. Wrote Ike: East-West disarmament talks should be continued within the U.N.

P: Refuted a surge of anti-American rumors in Paris to the effect that the U.S. cut off oil supplies to France at the height of the Suez crisis to signify disapproval of the Suez invasion. Declared U.S. Ambassador C. Douglas Dillon: "The truth is exactly the opposite," i.e., with normal French deliveries at 41,000 tons weekly, "in the second week of November U.S. shipments reached 212,000 tons." and by the first week in December had increased over twenty fold to 920,000 tons.

P: Supported, to the chagrin of the Greeks, British efforts to formulate a self-government plan for Cyprus and break long-deadlocked negotiations between the U.K., Greece, and Turkey over the future of the strategic British colony. The U.S., said the State Department, "still hopes" that its three allies and the people of Cyprus would "strive to agree upon a way of moving together toward a solution which is so important to themselves and to the entire free world."

P: Announced that President Eisenhower, invited by Nehru to visit India, has "no plan" to do so in 1957. Explained the White House: although Ike would like to accept, a visit to one country would entail time-consuming visits to many others along the way.

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