Comings & Goings

Named last week as U.S. Ambassador to Nationalist China: Howard Palfrey Jones, 58, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. Jones, jack of many professions--onetime newsman, professor of journalism, military government financial expert--joined the Foreign Service in 1948, became a fast friend of Nationalist China while serving in Taipei (1951-54) as counselor of embassy and charge d'affaires. He succeeds Karl L. Rankin, 59, whose seven years in Taipei have seen him through the Korean war and the Quemoy-Matsu crisis. Ambassador Rankin now goes on to troubles in Yugoslavia (where earlier this month Marshal Tito announced that he will accept no more U.S. military aid because the Administration's studied reappraisals and justifications to Congress for such aid represent "humiliation and irritation"). Other diplomatic changes:

P: To Guatemala: Lester De Witt Mallory; 53, who performed so ably as Ambassador to Jordan that he was kept there four years instead of the customary two. Careerman Mallory is credited with encouraging King Hussein to strengthen his pro-Western position. Spanish-speaking Lester Mallory was a Latin America hand (Mexico City, Havana, Buenos Aires) before going to Jordan, had let it be known that he would like to return to that area.

P: To Jordan: Parker T. Hart; 47, No. 2 man in the Cairo embassy, who now steps up to his first ambassadorship after 19 years of foreign service. Hart is one of the few U.S. diplomats to speak fluent Arabic, is regarded as one of the service's brightest comers, has put in more than seven years in Cairo. Jidda and Dhahran. P: To Venezuela: Edward J. Sparks. 59, currently Ambassador to Guatemala and one of the State Department's top Latin America men, who clipped Communist wings in Bolivia in 1953 by helping to arrange a $100 million program of U.S. aid, moves now to the post that has become one of the most sensitive in the hemisphere because of the $2 billion investment by American firms in Venezuelan oil.

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