Taking the Offensive

"Pressure from abroad" was the expressed reason the U.S. found itself moving last week toward a summit conference it did not want, on a subject--peace in the Middle East--that it did not choose, and at a time it did not particularly fancy. But such a meeting might yet prove to have some advantages.

When Britain's Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd sat down with Secretary Dulles in Washington to work out a reply to Nikita Khrushchev's proposal for a quick day-after-tomorrow summit session on the U.S. intervention in Lebanon, the Canadians were already clamoring for a firm yes to Khrushchev. West Germany's Konrad Adenauer had privately passed word that he thought something positive must be done. The NATO Council in Paris favored a meeting. But it was Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, putting through a last-minute telephone call to tell Ike that British and Commonwealth opinion demanded it, who put over the idea of holding a summit meeting with a major condition attached: it must be held in the U.N.

Cashing In. Britain's "Yes--at the U.N." reply to Khrushchev was different only in emphasis from the joint line Dulles and Lloyd had earlier agreed upon: the British accented the mutual willingness to talk; the U.S. emphasized the qualifications. Britain's answer, phrased with the terse and straightforward authority of Macmillan's personal voice, overnight united all British parties behind the government and gave it such a popular boost that some gloating Tories began talking of a snap national election to cash in ("We are riding the crest of the wave"). But Macmillan, who can resist popular outcries if he thinks them wrong (as in his refusal to suspend nuclear tests), showed not the slightest sign of approaching the summit defensively.

"We never mind talking," said a Macmillan aide, and Macmillan meant to speak as plainly to Khrushchev as Sir Anthony Eden had before about British determination to defend its interests in such Persian Gulf oil states as Kuwait (the source of half of Britain's oil). Britain's concern is immediate: the Sheik of Kuwait, whose oil royalties are some $300 million a year, conferred twice in Damascus last week with Nasser. It also became apparent that Macmillan was getting ready to put Nasser himself on trial. The Middle East war that Khrushchev said had "already begun," had in fact not even broken out, and the only killings were by Arab street mobs, or by Arab assassins. Not ashamed of sending British troops into Jordan, Macmillan was prepared to discuss the contribution to Middle Eastern instability of the ugly sort of Pan-Arabism represented by the Cairo hero who gets his picture taken smiling at King Saud's side while stirring plots to have him murdered.

Accidentally Neutral. If there was a world demand for summit talks about the Middle East, the French were in less of a hurry to gratify it. French diolomats blamed the stampede to the summit on an appeasement of British Labor, and thought it bad to base Western policy on an opposition that holds no responsibility. Piqued at first at being excluded from the U.S.-British foray into the Middle East, the French had been congratulating themselves ever since. "It saved France from making a blunder," said Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville. The French quickly saw in their accidental neutrality in this particular conflict a splendid chance to play procedural arbiter between West and East, and so to re-establish France among the top diplomatic powers. The situation suited lofty Charles de Gaulle.

Pursuing his own line toward Khrushchev, De Gaulle wrote his reply in longhand, had it typed, then carefully corrected it in his own hand. He accepted the idea of a summit session in principle, but pointed out that such a conference could not "succeed except in an atmosphere of objectivity and serenity." Citing blustering passages in Khrushchev's invitation, he asked: "Why compare [the U.S.-British intervention] with the aggression once committed by Hitler against Poland? Hitler, alas, was not alone!"

Unwilling to lend himself to propaganda circuses. De Gaulle had no enthusiasm for participating in a TV spectacular in Manhattan. He said that a summit meeting must be prepared with care, which would require time, and that since "the destiny of the Middle East affects in a direct manner that of all Europe," he proposed before any such meeting to "begin immediate consultations with other powers, notably European ones, which are interested." If Khrushchev wanted a special U.N. Security Council session, "considering, apparently, that the urgency of the questions relating to the Middle East has diminished," then such nations as Turkey, Iran and Israel should be included, as well as Khrushchev's own choices, India and the Arab states. But such a meeting "would not have any relation" to a summit meeting, said De Gaulle, which he thought should be held in Geneva or some other European city.

Artful Ally. De Gaulle's cool and correct independence was a welcome relief from the stereotyped and sterile unity in which Western responses are often couched. As an old connoisseur of insults, Khrushchev seemed appreciative of De Gaulle's, and was probably hopeful that he might have driven a wedge between the U.S. and France. De Gaulle's message delighted the French, who noted that De Gaulle had dispatched Couve de Murville to Rome and Bonn to line up continental countries behind his plan to speak for Europe at the summit. There was even the suggestion that with his insistence on preparation "with care, reason and calm," and exclusion of public speechmaking, De Gaulle might lift the summit out of the U.N. morass in moiling Manhattan. He himself might, if he wished, wind up presiding over a Security Council meeting, since by rotation the chairmanship falls in August to France.

De Gaulle's angularly dignified assertion of French independence, matched by Macmillan's cool self-confidence, might even help the U.S. free itself from fears of an untimely and unequal propaganda confrontation with Khrushchev.

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