No Sanctions

The United Nations General Assembly looked about as much like an armed camp as a forum for debate last week when it met to hear U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers call for an international treaty against terrorism. Fearing attacks even inside the U.N., bodyguards sat close to some foreign ministers scattered among the 131 delegations; gallery visitors were closely screened and carefully watched. Vulnerable figures like Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban moved amid the tightest security since Nikita Khrushchev visited the U.N. in 1960. In spite of that clear and present evidence of the insidious, pervasive nature of terrorism, Assembly delegates gave only a palsied response to Rogers' proposals for doing something about it.

Rogers offered a high-priority draft treaty outlining specific anti-terror measures and called for a convention next year to act on them. The treaty would provide for automatic extradition or prosecution of terrorists and sanctions against any nation that allows them training facilities or sanctuary. Rogers underscored his arguments with a grim roll call of terrorist acts this year alone. They include:

-- Skyjackings: 39 aircraft and their passengers held for ransom of one sort or another, and 13 frustrated attempts. Nine skyjackers were killed and two committed suicide. Three pilots and seven bystanders also died.

-- Letter bombs: one death of an Israeli diplomat in London two weeks ago. All together, 51 letter bombs have been discovered addressed to Israeli diplomats round the world; eight turned up last week in Washington, D.C., Australia and Brazil.

-- Hostages: the murder of eleven Israelis at the Olympics four weeks ago.

-- Sniping: shots fired into the Soviet mission in Manhattan last October, presumably by the militant Jewish Defense League.

Despite Rogers' grim litany of terror, only Israel and the South American countries, long bothered by urban guerrillas of their own, backed his plan wholeheartedly. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, while sharply condemning the murders in Munich, generally applauded the Palestinians in their battle with Israeli "criminals." British Foreign Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home saluted the U.S. effort, but Britain, along with France, Japan, Australia and other nations dependent upon Middle East oil, offered no support for any treaty that would include sanctions. As for the Middle East combatants, Eban claimed that terrorism was simply "a recognized arm of Arab governments in a policy of war against Israel." Arabs consider that the only way to rid the world of terrorism is to redress the grievances of the Palestinians.

The U.S. draft treaty glossed over a serious weakness, one that caused the failure of a special meeting on skyjacking held in Washington last month by members of the International Civil Aviation Organization. There, the Soviet Union demanded that all skyjackers, without exception, be returned to their country of origin. The U.S. and Western European nations oppose any resolution that might end the traditional right to grant political sanctuary. Even Israel, the strongest advocate of anti-terror measures, would be in a quandary if Soviet Jews were to skyjack an Aeroflot plane and fly it to Tel Aviv.

Considering all those obstacles, chances are slim for getting the treaty past the draft stage. Washington now hopes to fight terrorists through bilateral arrangements with like-minded countries. Toward that end, Rogers will discuss the situation with 51 different foreign ministers.

Until tighter international arrangements can be worked out, the U.S. is doing what it can unilaterally. President Nixon has appointed a Cabinet-level committee, including Rogers, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger, CIA Chief Richard Helms and Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray III, to oversee a war against terrorism on lines similar to the Administration's war on drugs. Nixon has promised them "every resource of this Government."

The Senate, as part of a tough new bill that would provide the death penalty for skyjacking, has empowered the White House to halt U.S. commercial flights to nations that train or harbor skyjackers. A similar bill is before the House of Representatives. The only difference is that the House version does not include, as does the Senate's, a $35 million provision for airline security, a cost now assumed by the airlines.

Unless other nations are equally strict, Rogers quietly warned delegates he met at the U.N. last week, airline employees may make the choice for them. Indeed, International Air Line Pilots Association President J.J. O'Donnell, who represents 50,000 crew members from 64 nations, warned that "air crews themselves may have to decide whether to continue running a daily risk of terror"--meaning, quite possibly, a refusal to fly to any country harboring skyjackers. Delegates representing 300,000 ground-crew workers in 23 countries, meanwhile, unanimously voted not to handle planes from nations that harbor known skyjackers after Jan. 1.

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