The Visiting List

The Visiting List Already growling bearishly at President Eisenhower's declaration of U.S. Middle East policy, the Soviet Union doubtless would grunt a little more this week at the social season linked delicately to an extension of U.S. diplomatic activity on many fronts. Heading the calendar: a three day state visit, beginning Jan. 30, by one of the world's last absolute monarchs, Saudi Arabia's bespectacled ghutra-draped King Saud Ibn Abdul Aziz al Faisal al Saud. Scheduled before Suez to visit Washington for discussions on the U.S. air base at Dhahran, influential King Saud comes after Suez for conferences of a nature far more serious to the Middle East in general.

This week a Middle Easterner great in moral--if not absolute--authority, Lebanon's Christian, Western-minded Foreign Minister Charles Malik (dubbed "the good Malik" to distinguish him from his onetime U.N. colleague, Russia's Jacob Malik) planned Washington conferences with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Next month, to discuss military assistance, will come Crown Prince Abdul Illah, who held the throne of Iraq as regent for his nephew Feisal, has stayed on as young (21) Feisal's adviser. In April will appear the erring, independent son of Communism, Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito, on a visit that will doubtless cause repercussions as violent in the U.S. as in Moscow. This week the initial repercussion came from House Majority Leader John W. McCormack, who warned Ike that a Tito visit might "make it more difficult" for Congress to pass an effective foreign aid bill.

The U.S. also had the welcome mat out for old, if recently estranged, friends. A Washington caller last week: French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau, paving the way for a possible call by Premier Guy Mollet. England's Harold Macmillan (see FOREIGN NEWS) was also prepared to visit, was assured a warmer welcome than could have been possible for Anthony Eden. And at week's end came hints of a caller whose appearance would do more for the Western alliance than a regiment of bustling, brief-cased statesmen. To Britain's Queen Elizabeth went overtures for a state visit, possibly in October. If the Queen is agreeable, a formal invitation will follow.

Reversing the flow of Middle East traffic, President Eisenhower last week picked former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman James Prioleau Richards, 62, as a $20,000-a-year special assistant, gave him the chairmanship of a special U.S. mission to explain Eisenhower foreign policy to Middle Eastern nations. South Carolinian Richards, who retired from Congress last week after 23 years in the House, has a formidable reputation on Capitol Hill, at the White House and abroad: last year he led a successful fight to trim $1 billion from the foreign aid bill, repeatedly called on the Administration to produce a long-range foreign aid policy that "made more sense." Now his job is to help it make sense.

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