The Perfect Format

The United Nations is the Capistrano of diplomacy. In their swallow-tailed coats, the key statesmen of member na tions swoop into New York each fall for the opening sessions of the General Assembly. This year some 77 foreign ministers and heads of government on hand presented a collection of rare dip lomatic birds unmatched in variety and political color.

The gathering also presented an ir resistible opportunity to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who gathered up his position papers and 33 aides, and shifted his headquarters from Foggy Bottom to the U.S. mission building, across from the U.N., for nine days of talks with some 70 visiting statesmen.

Relays of assistant secretaries mounted the Washington-to-New York air shut tle to keep Rusk briefed on new devel opments, and fully a third of his normal load of cables from U.S. embassies abroad was shunted to New York for him to read there.

To duplicate the U.N. talks by per sonal visits to all the capitals of the statesmen he was seeing would have re quired a three-month, globe-girdling tour. And though the schedule was jampacked, permitting never more than an hour per visit, it was the perfect format for Rusk, who is at his best in private diplomatic conversation. Rusk relied on his encyclopedic knowledge of world af fairs, lots of coffee, an occasional drink of Scotch, and two packs of Chester fields a day to get him through the polyglot, problem-laden week.

"A Handful of Oatmeal." First on Rusk's agenda was a private session with Spanish Foreign Minister Fernando Ma ria Castiella y Maiz. It was also the most urgent meeting of the day, since the Spaniards had threatened not to re new a ten-year agreement, expiring this year, which permits U.S. bases in Spain.

Coy at first, Castiella finally accepted a five-year extension. The price: "military assistance" to the Spanish armed forces and a pledge from Rusk of $100 million in development aid from the Export-Import Bank.

When Castiella left, there was hardly time for an aide to wipe out the ashtrays and for Rusk to glance swiftly at an other position paper before the arrival of the next foreign minister, Peru's Fer nando Schwalb Lopez. With Schwalb, Rusk talked economics and the Alliance for Progress. An hour later, with Ire land's Frank Aiken, the subject was the Congo. With Brazil's Joao Augusto de Aranjo Castro, the proposal for an atom-free zone in Latin America came up. Rusk said the U.S. would accept such an arrangement if it included Cuba and permitted U.S. transport of nuclear weapons through the Panama Canal.

With Indonesia's Dr. Subandrio, Rusk discussed the Malaysian crisis, but got little in the way of enlightenment from the elusive foreign minister. "It's like trying to grab a handful of oatmeal," said one aide.

Missing the Circus. Rusk usually tried to arrange appointments so that ministers from the same geographic area did not follow one another; thus two Europeans, or two Asians, normally would not meet in the doorway. Similarly, he favored mixing "problem" countries with "no problem" countries--so that he could have a breather between controversial sessions. Sometimes "problem" ministers proved to be just the contrary. Czechoslovakia's Foreign Minister Vaclav David, after probing for areas in which the U.S. and Czechoslovakia could expand trade, turned willingly to discussion of one longstanding problem. The Czechs, who in the past have refused safe exit to Czech-born U.S. citizens traveling in their country, agreed to cease the harassment. It was a small detail, but through normal diplomatic channels it could have taken weeks. Rusk and David came to agreement in less than an hour.

Late in the week, Rusk was host at his Waldorf-Astoria suite to British For eign Secretary Lord Home and Russia's Andrei Gromyko for a two-hour lunch which featured roast veal, champagne, with a dessert of lukewarm detente.

They discussed--in terms as bland as the meal--nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and the possibilities of stationing observers in both the Soviet Union and Western nations to guard against surprise attacks. Though nothing concrete came out of the lunch, Gromyko did invite Rusk to dinner at the Russian mission--another urgent date on Rusk's crowded U.N. schedule.

It was a busy week, both frustrating and fruitful, with more of the same in the offing. Though the Secretary's wife had hoped to drag him away for an evening at the Russian circus in Madison Square Garden, in the end she had to go without him. In fact, except for one evening when they had a quiet dinner at the Swiss Pavilion, the Rusks hardly saw each other at all.

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