Sailing on a Pledge

Beyond the power plays and dickerings that whirled around the Jordan crisis, Washington last week rated as the diplomatic news of the week another prime accomplishment: after months of threat, war and negotiation, the Suez Canal was open for business again. True enough, it was open on Nasser's terms, as he made clear in a unilateral declaration deposited with the United Nations Security Council. But in laying out the terms, Nasser made important concessions by pledging himself to: P: "Respect the terms and spirit" of the 1888 Constantinople Convention, which provided that the canal "shall always be free and open ... to every vessel of commerce or of war, 'without distinction of flag" (although--as the convention specified ambiguously--Egypt can take any measures necessary for her own defense). P: Refer differences of interpretation between Egypt and signers of the Constantinople Convention to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. P: Submit complaints about discrimination by the. Canal Authority to an "arbitration tribunal," with one member named by Egypt, one by the complaining party, and the third by both together or by the International Court.

P: Refrain from upping tolls by more than 1% a year without negotiation or arbitration, and set aside 25% of gross receipts each year for a canal development and improvement program.

For four weeks Arabic-speaking U.S. Ambassador Raymond A. Hare patiently tried to persuade the Egyptians to make the plan more satisfactory to the West by 1) changing it from a unilateral declaration of intention into something more formal, e.g., a multilateral treaty, 2) writing into it formal arrangements for cooperation between Egypt and canal users, and 3) acknowledging the six-point, Western-sponsored canal resolution voted by the United Nations Security Council last October. In talks with Nasser and Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi, Hare did manage to get them to make some minor improvements in their original version, e.g., by adding a provision that arbitration-tribunal decisions "shall be made by a majority," meaning that the Egyptian member will have no veto. But on the other three points Nasser refused.

The refusals made the Nasser statement hard for Britain, France--and even the U.S.--to swallow, since Western diplomacy had been bent on getting Nasser's signature on a treaty of some sort (see FOREIGN NEWS). U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge announced in the U.N. Security Council that the U.S.'s "de facto acquiescence" was "provisional," depending on how the declaration "is carried out in practice." But as a U.N. diplomat put it in a corridor aside: "Since the U.S. doesn't want war and Britain and France don't want economic sanctions, the only thing we can do is accept what we all know: it's Nasser's ditch."

Nasser's pledge was certainly not the best or even the most hopeful protection for the ships that sail the Suez. But in cold fact a treaty would be little better than a pledge if he intended to violate and subvert it. The true proof will come in his actions.

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