Mission Accomplished

"The best sort of chap to have around we've ever seen," said an Israeli negotiator. "The entire world will feel a sense of relief because of his efforts," proclaimed Cairo's newspaper Al Akhbar.

Followed by such grateful and admiring words from those he had just pried from each other's throats, U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold this week flew back to New York from his month-long peacemaking mission to the Middle East. From Jerusalem he dispatched an advance report to the Security Council that Israel and the four neighboring Arab states had all promised to observe a ceasefire along their borders, and had agreed not to retaliate even if provoked.

Man of Distinction. Stopping the intermittent bloodletting on the Gaza strip was Hammarskjold's most dramatic effort (TIME, April 30), but winning peace pledges along Israel's northern and eastern frontiers turned out to be his trickiest assignment. The Syrians, echoed by Lebanon and Jordan, insisted that they would not agree to a cease-fire unless Israel first promised not to go through with its announced plan for drawing irrigation water from the Jordan River. Israel would make no such pledge. Stymied for days, Hammarskjold finally found a way through. Doubling back to Jerusalem, he made the point to Prime Minister Ben-Gurion: while tapping the Jordan would not be a violation of the armistice, it would flout a 1953 Security Council resolution calling on Israel to cease water diversion. He returned to the Syrians and got them to agree to respect the cease-fire as long as Israel respected Security Council resolutions. Then he wrote a letter simply affirming that all U.N. members are obliged to abide by decisions of the Security Council. Both Israeli and Syrian faces were saved.

General of Armies. In the last decisive moments. Hammarskjold had effective support from the Egyptians in urging their allies into line. Egypt is not eager to have a war over Jordan water. Besides. Cairo and other Arab capitals, so lately cocky over Soviet help, have been cooled off considerably by B. and K.'s pledge to the British to work for Middle East peace. "Egypt does not want war," said Major General Hakim Amer in Cairo last week. "We appreciate the consequences."

War Minister Amer. an earnest, soft-spoken farmer boy from the Upper Nile, is the No. 2 man of Egypt's revolutionary regime, the closest confidant of Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the leader who would assume command of the allied armies of Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen should war break out with Israel.

Egyptian forces are "working day and night seven days a week" learning to use new Stalin tanks, MIG fighters and IL-28 jet bombers, Amer announced last week. But Western military observers think that many months must pass before the Egyptians can master their new weapons.

Amer confirmed for the first time that Egypt is getting submarines as part of its Soviet-bloc arms deal. Their obvious purpose: to blockade Israel.

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