Week of Deeds

Almost drowned out by the international cacophony over the summit conference last week was the news that fast-moving U.S. diplomats had racked up a substantial performance around the world by deeds rather than words. After tireless efforts of State Department Troubleshooter Robert Murphy to reconcile the supposedly irreconcilable, Lebanon quietly held a peaceful parliamentary election of a new President (see FOREIGN NEWS), and the U.S. promised to pull its troops out of Lebanon if the government so requested. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles began the week in London at a conference of remaining Baghdad Pact members, and after two phone calls to the President, committed the U.S. to "full partnership" to help Britain, Pakistan, Turkey and Iran "maintain collective security to resist aggression direct and indirect." At midweek Dulles was back in Washington to define U.S. summit conference aims at his press conference (see below), was off again this week for Brazil. He all but crisscrossed with Good-Will Ambassador Milton Eisenhower, just back from Central America with a trade-and-aid plan designed to head off developing Communist infiltration (see HEMISPHERE).

Meanwhile, as the U.S. waited for Khrushchev's answer to its invitation to a U.N. summit conference, home-front diplomats got to work on a crash basis to draft a comprehensive--if belated--U.S. policy for the Middle East. Essence of the plan: 1) a permanent new United Nations police force to keep the peace, monitor Arab radio broadcasts, news sheets, calls for assassinations, etc.; 2) a new international-assistance plan for Arab refugees still homeless after the Arab-Israel war of 1948; 3) a new international economic development plan. Considered but discarded to date: an arms embargo for the Middle East.

Still flaming across the Middle East was the unanswered question of whether the Arabs want stability more than they want Nasser and his dreams of Indian-Ocean-to-the-Atlantic-Ocean world empire. And at week's end that other air-age diplomat, Nikita Khrushchev, flew back from Peking after totally secret, portentous talks with Red China's Chairman Mao, sat down in Moscow and growled as though a peaceful settlement of anything was the farthest thing from his mind.

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