A New Concord

As they walked out into the White House rose garden last week for their public leavetaking, Dwight Eisenhower and Saudi Arabia's King Saud exchanged a double handclasp that signified to all the world a diplomatic achievement of first importance. As the delegated eyes and ears of the combustible Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians, Saud now thoroughly understood--if he could not yet publicly embrace--the Eisenhower doctrine. The talks, as President Eisenhower told his press conference, had cleared away much of "the underbrush of misunderstanding"; now the seeds could be planted, and clearly Saud would be a valued planter of U.S. offers of friendship and protection among his fellow Arabs.

Concert of Voices. The momentum of U.S. diplomacy carried even farther than Saud. Lebanon's Foreign Minister Charles Malik, a tried and true U.S. friend himself, met with the President, conferred with Saud, observed to waiting reporters that the King is a "real friend of the U.S." Still another Middle Eastern voice, that of natty Crown Prince Abdul Illah of Iraq, was raised in the fresh Washington harmony. Like Saud, with whom he met after seeing the President, Illah was speaking for a bloc--Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq--which is already closely allied with the West through membership (with Britain) in the Baghdad Pact. Altogether it was a concert of Middle Eastern voices that seemed at last to triumph over the clanking dirge from Egypt's Nasser (who nonetheless still speaks with the most influential single voice in the area).

The U.S.-Saudi talks produced the kind of solid physical supports without which the Eisenhower doctrine would founder in its offer of military support against Communist aggression in the Middle East. "There was agreement," said one U.S. official, "on everything we discussed." Beyond concord on aims and future pursuits within the framework of the U.N., the two countries agreed that 1) the U.S. will continue to use the strategically important Dhahran Air Field in Saudi Arabia for the next five years, in return for which 2) the U.S. will provide economic assistance and, over a five-year stretch, some $50 million in arms.

Five Pairs of Glasses. King Saud, who had extended his visit a week beyond the three days originally scheduled, prepared for his departure in high spirits. The President gave the King an eight-piece desk set and an original Eisenhower Colorado landscape; the wealthy monarch's gift to Ike was a well-guarded secret. No secret was the King's enormous gratitude for the way Americans had opened their arms to Saud's lame little son (see below). The King himself was the richer, materially, in five pairs of eyeglasses, which he ordered after an eye examination at Walter Reed Hospital.

At week's end Vice President Nixon, with his wife and children, went in the rain to Washington's National Airport to bid the King goodbye. As Saud boarded a Constellation bound for the Azores, where a Spanish plane would transport him to his next stop in Spain, Nixon said he hoped that the bad weather "doesn't leave a bad impression on Your Majesty." Replied Saud of Arabia: The rain was of no consequence; he would remember "the warmth of the heart."

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