The Value of Vagueness

If compromise is the essence of politics, the proceedings on the East River last week constituted a memorable display of the art. In the great hall where the General Assembly meets, in corridors, in the delegates' cocktail lounge and at lunch tables, some of the world's leading statesmen cautiously felt their way toward a formula that would allow everybody to emerge from the Mideast crisis with dignity intact.

The process began when Dwight Eisenhower, going beyond mere denunciation of "indirect aggression," advanced positive economic and political proposals. Scarcely had Ike finished speaking, when the Soviet Union gingerly followed the U.S. lead. Explained one U.S. diplomat: "The Soviets are washed up in the Security Council. They know they've got to woo the General Assembly to get anywhere in the U.N., and they have wised up to the fact that sweet reasonableness may get them farther."

To peddle Moscow's brand of sweet reasonableness, however, the Kremlin bosses sent glum, wooden-faced Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, whom a Western diplomat last week happily characterized as "the least attractive, least persuasive diplomat they have." In his gravelly tones Gromyko ran through a predictable catalogue of invective--"oil, oil and oil again; that was the thing which was tempting the monopolies of the U.S. and the United Kingdom"--and introduced a resolution demanding that the U.S. and Britain withdraw their troops from Lebanon and Jordan "without delay." But Gromyko closed on what from him--or any other Russian--was a surprisingly conciliatory note. Russia, he insisted, was less interested in getting her own resolution passed than in finding "a mutually acceptable formula." Said he: "Even today, if you please--I repeat, even today--we are prepared to enter into any sort of consultations with any delegations, including those of the U.S. and the United Kingdom." (He did not say that U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had sought Gromyko out for a private chat the night before.)

Psychoneurosis Must Go! But then the Arabs were heard from. On the second day of the General Assembly debate, new Jordanian Delegate Abdul Monem Rifai, brother to Jordanian Premier Samir el Rifai, did his best to pull the rug out from under one of the essential elements in any Middle East settlement. Jordan, declared Rifai, was flatly opposed to "the dispatch of U.N. forces or U.N. observers to be stationed on Jordan territory." But since young King Hussein's government would almost surely collapse overnight without foreign support, the question of

U.N. troops instead of British troops really depended on how determined the British were to get out of Jordan as fast as possible.

It was less easy to dismiss the venom spewed forth next day by Saudi Arabia's Ahmed Shukairy. Speaking for the Arab princes who live on the royalties from U.S. oil companies, Shukairy exhorted the Western powers to get out of the Middle East and stay out.

"The Arabs are determined to be lord and master of their homeland, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Gulf," shrilled Shukairy. "There must be a rushing consent to Arab aspirations before they are achieved without consent. This psychoneurotic complex of hating President Nasser should be extracted from Western thinking." The ferocity of his language might have been intended to convey verbal loyalty to Nasser and Arab nationalism while concealing Saudi Arabia's unwillingness to pool its $300 million-a-year income with its Arab brothers. As he put it, "Oil, our oil, is not a political commodity of international concern."

"Only Slightly Abusive." In Europe President Eisenhower's speech received generally good notices and in some cases enthusiastic applause. In Britain the liberal Manchester Guardian called Ike's proposals "a hopeful development." Italy's non-Communist papers hailed them as "noble and generous," smugly hinted that the President had got many of his ideas from Italian Premier Amintore Fanfani during Fanfani's recent visit to Washington. In Norway a government spokesman thought the U.S. program might prove "as beneficial as the Marshall Plan."

Trouble was that European enthusiasm found few echoes among the Arabs themselves; they might not have found much to resent, but still they would not cheer. Lebanon's usually pro-Western Al-Jarida complained that Ike had not addressed himself to "the basic problem of the Arab world"--Israel. The most hopeful thing a New York Times correspondent could find to say about Egyptian press comment was that it was "only slightly abusive."

The Special Interests. If Ike's long-range economic and political proposals got a slow welcome, the U.N. General Assembly could scarcely adjourn without working out a resolution that at least attempted to ease the pressing problems of Lebanon and Jordan. And here the problem was not only the Arabs, but a variety of special national interests in the 81-nation General Assembly: P: The Russians were sounding conciliatory in hopes of mustering a two-thirds majority for a resolution sufficiently ambiguous to be cited later as proof that the U.N. "ordered"' the U.S. and Britain out of Lebanon and Jordan. P: The Latin Americans, although sympathetic to the U.S. position, were not willing to support any resolution that clearly implied U.S. intervention in Lebanon was justified because it had been requested by Lebanese President Camille Chamoun. The reason: fear that this would establish a precedent that might someday be used to justify U.S. intervention on behalf of the established government in Latin American revolutions. P: Israel, unconvinced that U.N. support alone could keep Hussein on his throne, was plugging for a great-power guarantee of all existing Mideast frontiers. If Russia wished to be a Middle East power, let it be made to guarantee Israeli as well as Arab borders. P: India flatly opposed dispatch of U.N. troops to Lebanon and Jordan. One reason : India wants no precedents established for sending blue-and-white-helmeted U.N. forces into disputed Kashmir.

Food for the Poets. Beating their way through this thicket of conflicting interests, the movers and shakers of the General Assembly were steadily working their way toward a resolution as bland as porridge. At week's end the compromise most likely to succeed appeared to be a Norwegian resolution that--in suitably vague terms--would authorize U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold to "make the U.N. presence felt" in Lebanon and Jordan as a prelude to withdrawal of U.S. and British forces.

To judge by the Suez crisis, if Hammarskjold succeeds in damping down the Lebanese and Jordanian crises enough to warrant U.S. and British withdrawal, Arab poets a year hence will be writing songs in praise of the heroic Lebanese and Jordanian patriots who fearlessly drove the Western imperialists into the sea.

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