For an Early Closing

The situation in the Middle East last week was like one of those intricate real-estate closings when an Empire State Building changes hands: everything seemed to be contingent on something else.

The Syrians said they would start the Iraq Petroleum Co.'s big pipeline pumping again only when the Israelis cleared out of Egypt. The Egyptians said they would start talking about a Suez Canal settlement if the Israelis would pull their remaining troops back from the Gaza strip and from the Egyptian forts commanding the entrance to the Gulf of Aqaba. The Israelis said they would withdraw their troops if the U.N. would guarantee that Egypt would not use Gaza for a raiding base again and the forts as a strongpoint for blockading Israel's access to its port of Elath. The U.S. said that it was all a matter for U.N.

"Innocent Passage." Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, after a series of talks so tense that Israel's Foreign Minister Golda Meir took to the hospital in a state of exhaustion, issued his authoritative report for the General Assembly's guidance. His first finding: Israel must unconditionally comply with last November's resolution calling on the British. French and Israeli invaders to get out of Egypt.

But Hammarskjold also recognized Israel's right of "innocent passage" in the Gulf of Aqaba, and thus began at last to work his way out of the dead-end U.N. legalism that Nasser had been the unoffending victim of aggression, and the U.N.'s only responsibility was not to reward aggression. Hammarskjold had to operate within the mandate of the Assembly, where the Arab-Asian bloc, when joined by the Communists, can muster up to 36 out of 80 votes. He suggested that if Israel withdrew to the 1949 armistice line, it might be possible to enforce the 1949 agreement against another violation: that of Egypt's aggressive sealing off of the Gulf of Aqaba narrows. He threw out hints of how the Assembly might keep the U.N. Emergency Force in position both at the gulf narrows and at key points along both sides of the Israeli-Egyptian border. This was the course that the U.S., pressing Israel for prior surrender, now sought.

Uncertain Horseman. The Assembly, made up as it is, is no place to pursue abstract justice, or even sensible compromise. Diplomats expect to deal more privately and directly. Washington is convinced that Egypt's Nasser is a changed man since the October invasion showdown. Having learned from that crisis that headstrong action can bring heavy consequences, say U.S. diplomats, Nasser is no longer a hero on horseback ready to lead the Arabs to glory, no longer so sure of himself, and blows hot and cold. Though he has weathered the immediate storm, his long-range position is bad and getting worse. Diplomats have heard that he is having trouble with his colonels, and the news that Egypt really took a bad beating in Sinai is getting around as the first of 5,800 Egyptian P.W.s returned home in exchange for what the Israelis say is Nasser's one captured Israeli.

The State Department thinks that in this chastened mood Nasser can be brought around to negotiating on both the Gulf of Aqaba and the Gaza Strip. Exactly the opposite reading can be made from the same assumptions: when Nasser believes he is being crowded and provoked is the moment when he behaves like a bull in the ring; he paws the ground, snorts, glowers and charges. One dramatic move remains in his power: to halt work on the Suez Canal clearance. It was plainly no coincidence that three of Cairo's most prominent captive newspapers made just such a threat last week.

According to Cairo headquarters of Lieut. General Raymond A. ("Spec") Wheeler, 71, the able and tireless chief of the U.N. task force, salvage is going great guns: the cement-filled hulk Akka may be hauled out this week, and with this prime obstacle out of the way the canal may be cleared for medium-size ships more than ten days in advance of General Wheeler's March 10 goal. All will be well, in short, if he is left alone that long.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.