Hopes for a Peaceful Summer

With summer approaching, the volatile Middle East has seemed to be nearing the flashpoint for yet another war. For one thing, the failure of Henry Kissinger's round of shuttle diplomacy in March left a dangerous diplomatic vacuum. Even more dangerous, time was running out for the United Nations peace-keeping forces on the Golan Heights and in Sinai. When the U.N.'s six-month mandate in Sinai expired in April, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat agreed to extend it only until July 24. With a similar mandate for the U.N. Golan force due to expire this week, Syrian President Hafez Assad was expected to set a July deadline too, thereby placing Israel under heavy pressure to negotiate and increasing the possibility of military action.

There was some fighting in the region last week, but it was isolated. In Beirut, new skirmishing broke out between right-wing Christian Phalangists and Palestinian guerrillas.

Elsewhere, however, the situation remained cool. Unexpectedly, Assad decided to give the 1,200-man U.N. Disengagement Observer Force on the Golan Heights a full six-month extension. Discussing this surprising move, an Egyptian diplomat suggested that the Syrian ruler "had to renew for six months because he had no Suez Canal to reopen." He was referring to the fact that Sadat, while limiting the U.N. mission in Sinai to three more months to keep pressure on for peace talks, had also decided to reopen the canal next week to emphasize his desire for a settlement. Thus, Assad had to do something to demonstrate the same spirit. But it also showed that he was not limited to following Sadat's lead. In a far different manner, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi was showing the same sort of bristly independence. The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram angrily charged that during Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin's visit to Libya two weeks ago, Gaddafi agreed to take $4 billion in Soviet arms in return for allowing the Russians to establish military facilities and technicians on Libyan soil. Libya speedily denied such reports, but diplomats in Cairo were not impressed. Even if the dimensions of Soviet aid were not yet clear, Egyptian observers said, the fact remained that the Russians had moved into Libya on a major scale and from there will be in a strong position, through Gaddafi, to threaten Sadat.

The Egyptian President nonetheless remains the dominant Arab spokesman in current moves toward peace negotiations. Preparing to meet next week with President Ford in Salzburg, Sadat wound up a series of visits to Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Syria in search of an Arab consensus. He found a formula for the knotty problem of Palestinian representation at any future Geneva Conference. King Hussein would represent Jordan; at the same time, however, a Palestinian delegation would be designated, and other Arab states, with support from the Soviets, would press the U.S. to seat it along with Hussein.

Normally, such a pro-Palestinian move would anger Israel, but Jerusalem largely ignored it. Premier Yitzhak Rabin's government was relieved that Kissinger and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko had agreed at their Vienna meeting to delay any reconvening of the Geneva talks until autumn. One Foreign Ministry spokesman said: "This will relieve the pressure and allow a politically useful and militarily quiet summer."

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