Weekend in Washington

From the solicitous reception he got from the New Frontier, the little cold-eyed man who stepped off the airliner in Washington might have been Britain's Prime Minister rather than the Opposition leader. Even in his own Labor Party six months ago. pipe-puffing Harold Wilson was regarded as a slippery opportunist and a constant threat to the party's hard-won unity under the late Hugh Gaitskell. Though his views on most major issues were calculatedly murky, "Little Harold," as his foes call him, drew left-wing support by condemning U.S. handling of Cuba, cheering on the unilateralists, bitterly opposing Britain's bid for Common Market membership.

However, it was not Wilson's past that brought out Washington's red carpet but his potential future. Even though elections will probably not be called for at least a year, no U.S. policymaker could ignore today's Gallup polls, which give the Labor Party a record 50% to 33 1/2% lead over the Tories. If that trend should continue, Harold Wilson would be Britain's next Prime Minister.

What Administration officials got last week was ample demonstration of the fact that since Gaitskell's death, the flinty, quick-witted Yorkshireman has had to move closer to the political center to hold the party together and take hard and fast stands on which Britain's electorate can weigh the merits of a Labor government. Wilson was plainly anxious to win the New Frontier's confidence. After an in tensive, four-day round of conferences with President Kennedy and key administrative hands, the Labor leader's views on most outstanding world issues seemed now at least as close to U.S. policy as Harold Macmillan's.

"Denegotiation." Wilson's most reassuring message was that he unequivocally supports NATO as "the center of our defense policy in Europe." To the delight of the Defense Department, which has long tried in vain to persuade Britain to build up its chronically inadequate ground forces on the Continent, Wilson argued that Britain could well afford a strong army if. as he proposes, it were to eliminate its nuclear strike force--"the so-called independent, so-called British, so-called deterrent."

Thus, if elected, Wilson would "dene-gotiate" Britain's agreement at Nassau to build a Polaris submarine fleet, and hope thereby to discourage other nations from building independent deterrents. He is strongly opposed to giving Germany a finger on the trigger, which "would be highly provocative to the Soviet Union and make it even harder to get agreements," particularly on the matter of disarmament. Belying reports that he was "soft" on West Berlin, Wilson insisted that it must remain a free and viable city, and that allied troops would have to be stationed there "for the foreseeable future."

Reservations. There were some issues on which Wilson's views were directly at odds with those of the Administration; U.S. officials were inclined to shrug them off as lip service to Labor's left wing. Most important divergence is his support for withdrawal of NATO and Soviet troops from Central Europe, making "nuclear-free" zones of East and West Germany and Hungary--a proposal that the U.S. considers impractical and dangerous. Wilson seemed as wobbly as ever on some questions, notably the Common Market, which he now conditionally favors. He supports greater East-West trade, which is not an Administration goal, and favors seating Communist China in the U.N., which is directly contrary to U.S. policy, but he told U.S. officials that these are not high-priority aims.

These views gave reason for continued reservations about Harold Wilson. Moreover, though his incisive, pragmatic style undeniably impressed Washington, older heads have still to be persuaded that Wilson's convictions will not shift again --as they have so many times before.

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