Playing for High Stakes

In a TIME interview, Haig outlines the goals of U.S. policy

Shortly after concluding 4 1/2 hours of arduous negotiations with Britain's new Foreign Secretary Francis Pym last week, Secretary of State Alexander Haig spent 70 minutes talking with TIME's State Department correspondents Gregory H. Wierzynski and Johanna McGeary. Excerpts from the interview:

Q. What is at stake for the U.S. in the Falkland Islands crisis?

A. There are basic issues of international law and their relationship with the fundamental objective of this Administration's foreign policy, and that is to insist that historic change occur through the accepted rules of law. So that's a stake of principle.

Secondly, there are hemispheric interests. We have been working to enhance our relationship with the Organization of American States and its member states, and have had considerable success in getting their support for the policies that we have been pursuing in El Salvador and Nicaragua. That is also at stake.

Then there are the Atlantic-community interests. An American misstep could have lasting consequences. There are also North-South overtones of colonialism and anticolonialism. It would be a tragic outcome if this issue were to deteriorate into that highly charged context.

Finally, of course, there are East-West overtones. It is the proclivity of the Soviet Union to fish in troubled waters, and there is no reason to anticipate it could be any different in this situation.

Q. What kind of policies do you intend to pursue in the Middle East after the transfer of the Sinai is completed?

A. The Camp David process is our framework for peace. We see no other alternative that offers any prospect for a lasting, comprehensive and just settlement of this historic problem.

If the two parties now seek to pull out of the Camp David framework, there will be little hope for progress on those issues which they agreed to defer to let history contribute to a solution. There will be no solution on autonomy. But if they continue to abide by the concept agreed to at Camp David, which establishes a transition period in which confidence building can emerge under a central governing authority, there is no reason that this is undoable.

That doesn't preclude broadening the participation in this process--not at all. Nor does it mean we're contemplating doing that in the near term. First we've got progress to make in the Israeli-Egyptian talks.

Q. What about your concept of a "strategic consensus" in the area?

A. Despite all the bumps and lumps and all the skepticism of the so-called strategic consensus, we have one. This was never an American-made formula but an expression of strategic reality, in the context of direct Soviet threats to the area, Soviet proxy threats or radical threats, as from Iran, to moderate Arab regimes.

We have a growing Syrian alignment with Iran, a threat to Iraq, a threat to the Persian Gulf states, to Saudi Arabia, to the collective interests of the moderate Arab world. The moderate Arab world shares a strategic consensus--that's what I was talking about last year when you fellows were so skeptical. Of course the consensus is constantly butting up against the Arab-Israeli dispute, but it's a new factor of increasing significance, which one hopes can be used to ameliorate historic problems.

Everybody loved to say, "Haig is trying to create a strategic consensus." I'm not trying to create a strategic consensus. I was trying to recognize one that was emerging, and to point out that it had an impact, and will from this day forward, on events in the Middle East. It can be derailed by Arab-Israeli tensions at any moment. But it isn't going to change. It's there. If it becomes Sovietized, through the new Syrian connection with Iran, for example, then we have a most serious problem.

Q. Several recent visitors to Cuba have come back with the idea that President Fidel Castro is ready for an overture and have criticized the Administration for not responding.

A. Look, Mr. Castro knows very, very clearly those aspects of his policy that have alienated him from the U.S. and a large portion of the rest of the Western Hemisphere--intervention in the internal affairs of other states in this hemisphere and elsewhere. This is not to prejudge whether or not he might be willing to reconsider, but years of experience and a fruitless dialogue in the preceding Administration would make one very wary of being drawn into meaningless discussions for discussion's sake.

Q. On Soviet-American relations, there is a sense that American policy has recently been reactive to Moscow initiatives. Only three months after your talk with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, when you declared that Poland cast a long and dark shadow over East-West relations, there is talk about a summit with President Leonid Brezhnev and a rush to engage in arms-control talks.

A. It's very clear that President Reagan considers the subject of arms control in a special category of normal bilateral relationships with the Soviet Union. For example, the President proceeded with the talks on reducing nuclear arms in Europe despite the Polish situation, because of his very special concern about the growth of nuclear armaments and his dedication to the negotiation of substantial reductions. This, however, does not mean that the prospects for arms control are not influenced by linkage.

On the talk of summitry, the President said if Brezhnev were to attend a special disarmament conference, he would be pleased to meet with him. He described that as something different from summitry. That does not represent being driven in any way by Soviet policies. Perhaps even just the opposite, if you think hard about it.

Q. Still, it seems that the Soviets need an arms agreement perhaps more than the U.S. does, given their terrible economy.

A. The world needs an arms agreement; the international environment needs it. We're in the process of completing our preparations for such discussions. We have given it a great deal more thought than perhaps may have been the case in the past. We don't want to go to Moscow or to Geneva, or to wherever the talks will be, with proposals that are not serious and meaningful, and that do not involve substantial reductions in the threat--the growth of nuclear armaments.

Q. What is your reaction to reports that unnamed staffers at the White House are undercutting your position?

A. I have no comment. Please write that.

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