Maneuvering Toward the Summit

Merchant ships moved through the Suez Canal last week for the first time since the Six-Day War eight years ago. In preparation for the canal's formal reopening on June 5, the West German freighters MUensterland and Nordwind sailed to Port Said from the Bitter Lakes along with 13 other ships. The rusting carriers had been trapped there since the canal was blocked in 1967. Discerning a parallel between the preparations for the canal reopening and the broader peace negotiations that have made it possible, Egyptian Cartoonist Salah Jaheen in al Ahram last week drew President Anwar Sadat piloting a tug named "New Diplomatic Drive" and hauling a ship designated "Arab Policy" out of a diplomatic bitter lake of intransigency.

The good ship "Diplomatic Drive" was certainly busy last week. To emphasize Egypt's peace hopes, Sadat in connection with the canal reopening declared Port Said and the surrounding area a free-trade zone. In preparation for his June 1 summit meeting in Salzburg with President Ford, Sadat was set to embark on a round of conferences in Arab capitals, including the first visit ever by an Egyptian President to Baghdad (see story page 32). In Moscow, meanwhile, the Soviets completed a series of strategy conferences with Arab diplomats from Egypt, Iraq and Syria and with Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. This week Premier Aleksei Kosygin will pay official visits to Tunisia and Libya.

Common Position. The Soviet-Arab sessions were inconclusive. The Russians were obviously relieved by the failure of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's bilateral shuttle negotiations. As an alternative, the Russians have demanded "an early resumption" of the Geneva Conference, but as of last week it appeared that they were having second thoughts about reconvening the talks without thorough preparation. As one Western diplomat in Moscow put it, the Soviets were having trouble getting "all their Arabs lined up in a row." Last week Pravda, with some irritation, observed that "success at Geneva would be facilitated by a common Arab position on the Palestinian issue."

Moscow fears that a Soviet-sponsored Geneva Conference might be derided as a Soviet failure if it collapsed. Thus the U.S.S.R. is willing to let what it calls "bilateral separate deals," meaning resumption of Egyptian-Israeli talks under U.S. aegis, continue in tandem with Geneva discussions. So far Washington seems uncertain about what will emerge from President Ford's double summit--with Sadat in Salzburg and ten days later in Washington with Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin.

The President at his press conference last week explained only that "we're in the process of reassessing our Middle East policy, and they [Sadat and Rabin] can make a very valuable contribution with their on-the-spot recommendation." One critic in the Israeli government last week suggested that the summits are self-serving. "They are-designed to underline the importance of the U.S. as a power in the Middle East," he said. "The region is becoming the testing ground for American credibility after Viet Nam." Probably the most that can be hoped for, however, is that they will provide a flexible atmosphere in which shuttle talks can be resumed in another form.

Kissinger still blames the Israelis for the failure of his last round of shuttle diplomacy. In secret testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, obliquely, in an interview last week with NBC Today show Hostess Barbara Walters, the Secretary accused Jerusalem of shortsightedness in not accepting the American diplomatic process. He has also chided Israeli government officials for having misled him, TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin reported last week from Jerusalem. In recent contacts with Israeli diplomats Kissinger has complained: "The minutes of our meetings show that the President and I told you 24 times that the Egyptians would not agree to nonbelligerency. You still invited me to the Middle East, and I had a right to assume that there was a change in the Israeli attitude." In answer, Israeli officials insist that Kissinger was explicitly told how far the Jerusalem government would go in exchanging territory in the Sinai for Egyptian tokens of nonbelligerency. Israel was further annoyed by Washington's decision to provide Hawk surface-to-air missiles to Jordan, a move they saw as retaliation against Israel whose own request for U.S. missiles and other sophisticated equipment is being held up by the Ford reassessment.

Recently Kissinger has put some of the blame for the confusion on the U.S. embassy in Tel A viv and its intelligence gathering under the late Ambassador Kenneth Keating (see MILESTONES). To replace Keating, who was a political appointee in one of the most sensitive U.S. ambassadorial posts, Kissinger last week chose Malcolm Toon, 58, a tough career diplomat who has served in Moscow, Belgrade and Prague.

Off Balance. Israeli spokesmen described the present state of Jerusalem-Washington relations as "a chill between friends." But Israel has clearly been caught off balance by Kissinger's charges of inflexibility, by Ford's unilateral announcement of the summits (Premier Rabin was not consulted about the meeting with Sadat) and by shrewd Arab efforts to sway U.S. public opinion. In the latest such move, Jordan's King Hussein, accepting an honorary degree from The Citadel last week, outlined Arab willingness to accept Israel. Speaking for Egypt and Syria as well as his own country, the King said that the three "confrontation powers" were "ready, even eager, to make peace. We accept the conditions for peace that have been laid down--recognition of Israel, nonbelligerency, Israel's right to exist within recognized borders, and our willingness to make and support a final peace. All of these we accept on condition that Israel withdraw from all Arab territory and recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinians in then-homeland. It is as simple as that."

Unfortunately, the situation is not that simple. Last week Palestinian guerrillas operating in the heavily guarded West Bank aimed a rocket in the direction of Israel's Knesset. The rocket missed its mark, but another homemade fedayeen bomb, planted in a Jerusalem apartment house, killed one man and wounded three others. The attacks undoubtedly reinforced Israeli feelings that the West Bank cannot be returned to Arab sovereignty without prior guarantees of peace. "Imagine how much terrorism there would be if we were not in control," said an Israeli official angrily.

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