US. Trial Balloon at the U.N.

"Opportunities must be seized or they will disappear." So said Henry Kissinger last week in his address to the new United Nations General Assembly, promising a vigorous U.S. effort to follow up on its recent diplomatic triumph in the Middle East. Yet last week the Secretary of State's peace cavalcade seemed to slow down.

Those Pershings. As scheduled, Israeli and Egyptian representatives at Geneva's Palais des Nations put their pens to the interim Sinai accord. Also as expected, the Israelis only initialed the documents, withholding full signatures--and full binding agreement to the Sinai package--until an Administration proposal to station up to 200 technicians at monitoring posts around the Mitla and Giddi passes is approved by Congress. Nevertheless, some uneasiness continued to surface on Capitol Hill about parts of the Administration's Sinai deal. The main focus is the private Kissinger assurance to the Israelis that they will get a "positive" hearing on their request for some sophisticated weapons, including Pershing missiles. Congressional Democrats have vowed to stall the vital technicians resolution until the Administration reveals all such agreements it has made with Middle Eastern governments. Meanwhile, Kissinger last week began an effort to seize a negotiating opportunity on a new Middle East front, the Golan Heights. Before the current six-month mandate for U.N. peace keeping on the Golan expires on Nov. 30, a new agreement between Israel and Syria must be worked out.

The prognosis is not good; Syria last week not only attacked Jerusalem and Washington as part of what Defense Minister Mustapha Tlas called "our enemies, including U.S. imperialism and its agents and traitors," but Damascus also apparently included Egypt--for signing a Kissinger agreement--among the traitors. To blunt such attacks, Kissinger at the U.N. threw out a new proposal for an informal meeting of all Middle East "nations." By inference, that would exclude the Palestine Liberation Organization, but at the same time it could draw the Soviets once more into intricate discussions on such matters as the Golan Heights. As a boost for Egypt, President Ford also indicated that Washington is now prepared to "consider" providing military equipment for Sadat.

Hopeful Sign. Administration aides readily concede that the proposal was merely a trial balloon. There was at least one hopeful sign. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, following Kissinger to the U.N. podium, delivered a speech so ambiguous that it left listeners puzzling over just what Moscow felt about the Secretary's Middle East aims. Pressed by newsmen on that point later, Gromyko responded with some positive-sounding negatives: "I would not say that we do not agree on everything."

Kissinger, and Gromyko also, seized diplomatic opportunities in some areas outside the Middle East:

P: Kissinger took time out from his U.N. rounds to attend the quiet burial of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the alliance founded in 1954 to contain the expansion of Communist regimes in Southeast Asia. He and the representatives of the active members of SEATO--Britain, New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines and Thailand--decided that the alliance, "in the light of the new situation in the Southeast Asian region, should be phased out." Thailand and the Philippines were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the treaty at a time when they had begun to seek improved relations with Peking, and with Hanoi emerging as a major power in the region.

P: As he does almost every year at the U.N., Gromyko proposed a sweeping disarmament agreement and repeated a call for a cessation of all nuclear testing. And as usual, his proposals, which seem mainly designed to impress the developing countries, elicited a lot of yawns and a scattering of polite applause. This year Gromyko called for a ban on "new weapons of mass annihilation." Typically, however, his speech contained no hint of how a ban on such weapons would be verified or just what items it would cover--issues that have stymied efforts at international disarmament for more than a decade.

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