Diplomats at Work

In move and countermove around the globe, U.S. diplomacy last week:

P: Clinched with Saudi Arabia the final details of the Dhahran air-base agreement worked out by President Eisenhower and King Saud during the King's visit to Washington (TIME, Feb. 18). The Saudis extended U.S. access to the vital strategic base, 1,000 miles south of Russia's Baku oilfields, for another five years. In return, the U.S. will give the Saudis some $50 million worth of services in the period by helping improve Saudi Arabian civil-aviation facilities, setting up or extending present U.S. training programs for the Saudi army, air force and navy, etc.

P: Reaffirmed, in the face of Saudi Arabian threats to bar foreign shipping from the Gulf of Aqaba, its support of the principle of "innocent passage." The U.S. view: the gulf, gateway to the Israeli port of Elath, has international status, i.e., no nation may blockade it unless the International Court of Justice rules otherwise.

P: Bolstered, by an announcement in Iraq, the strength of the Baghdad Pact countries against Communist aggression. The announcer: Special U.S. Ambassador and Ike-Doctrine Salesman James P. Richards. The announcement: the U.S. will provide the pact's four Middle Eastern members (Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey) with $12.5 million in Eisenhower Doctrine funds to spur "regional" highway, railroad, telecommunication projects. In Saudi Arabia, Richards scored heavily with King Saud, who bought deeper into the Eisenhower Doctrine by issuing a joint communique promising "to oppose Communist activities, other forms of imperialism and any other dangers that threaten peace and stability in the area."

P: Revealed by way of a NATO Council announcement in Paris that the U.S. would provide some of its NATO allies with three types of missiles in fiscal 1957, among them the ground-to-ground Honest John and Matador, the ground-to-air Nike. Said General Lauris Norstad, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe: although U.S. law forbids the delivery of weapons with nuclear warheads, the NATO forces should get training in both "conventional" and nuclear missilery.

P: Rejected as propaganda a Soviet complaint of discrimination against three Russian ships which recently used the Panama Canal.

P: Spelled out before a meeting of the U.N. Disarmament Subcommittee in London the new U.S. plan aimed at limiting and eventually halting H-bomb construction. Gist of the plan: the U.S., Britain and Russia, having first agreed on an "effective inspection plan," should 1) halt production of fissionable material for weapons purposes on April 1, 1958, or as soon as possible thereafter upon the ratification of the necessary agreements; and 2) thereafter divert all such nuclear production to peaceful purposes. Net effect of the plan: while allowing the big powers to hang on to nuclear weapons stockpiled before the cut-off date, it would "reverse the trend" of nuclear armament and pave the way for transfers of existing stockpiles to non-military use.

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