The Bargainers

As the second London conference on the Suez crisis convened last week in the chandeliered conference room of London's Lancaster House, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles faced a roomful of uneasy men with varying ideas but a common interest. Their interest was to find, through diplomacy rather than war, the way to remove the Suez from the sole control of Egypt's Nasser. The immediate objective was to equip that common interest with a workable bargaining instrument fashioned from the Anglo-American plan for a canal users' association.

As first announced by Britain's Sir Anthony Eden and elaborated by Dulles, the plan had been a challenge backed by the threat of detours around the canal, a sea lift of Western Hemisphere oil, and probably a complaint to the U.N. But, from the moment of his arrival in London, Dulles found only the British and French enthusiastic for this extreme potential of the users' idea--and they were bothered by the realization that the most that they could expect from the U.S. to defray the heavy cost of detour would be loans to pay for U.S. oil imports, not gifts. Furthermore, Nasser was so far proving disconcertingly able to run the canal by himself. As long as the canal remained open, the smaller nations were unwilling to shoulder the extra cost of sending their ships around the cape. Scandinavia, West Germany and Italy were unhappy at the thought of jeopardizing their trade with the Arab world. Most argued that a boycott would cost them more than it would cost Nasser.

The users' idea in its most extreme concept--as a huge Western economic club to beat down Nasser--had its flaws for John Foster Dulles as well. For the U.S. aim had to be not only to protect its vital interests and those of its Western allies in the Suez and Middle East, but also to negotiate in a manner that did not draw a permanent cleavage between the Western world and the Arab and Asian countries.

So out of these second thoughts, objections and reservations, the diplomats at Lancaster House tried to fashion a single purpose.

What to Seek. Dulles put forward the users' association plan in the most deliberately tentative terms, his speech studded with phrases such as "I suppose," "I would think," "I suggest." "What is it that we seek?" he asked. "It is nothing hostile to or prejudicial to Egypt" but "on a provisional, de facto practical operating basis, a measure of cooperation with Egypt." The association would hire pilots, collect and pay out tolls and fees. Membership, he said, "would not involve the assumption by any member of any obligation," though naturally "it would be hoped" members would voluntarily cooperate.

There came a barrage of objections. Sweden's Foreign Minister Osten Unden, who had been a member of the Menzies mission, urged another attempt to negotiate directly with Nasser. Nasser had offered to renew the guarantees of the 1888 Convention, he pointed out, and offered to have an international body fix tolls. Spain, too, urged "careful study'' of Nasser's offer. Italy's Gaetano Martino flatly contested the statement of Britain's Selwyn Lloyd that the 1888 Convention gave users the right to run ships through the canal with their own pilots. "This is juridically not exact," he said, and offered a resolution designed to limit the function of the users' association to negotiation with Nasser. Bluntest was Pakistan. The users' association, said new Foreign Minister Malik Firoz Khan Noon, sounded like "an imposed settlement," and, he declared, Pakistan "cannot associate itself with this proposal."

No Coercion. By its first afternoon the conference was in acute peril of bogging down in irresolution. Dulles recognized the crisis. To reassure the nervous and encourage the wary, Dulles softened the plan still further. There was no intention to coerce Nasser, he said. "Obviously, if Egypt makes it obligatory to use only pilots that are chosen and assigned to it, then I do not see that pilots of the association would practically have very much to do, and that part of the plan would have collapsed." The U.S., even if it wanted to, had no legal power to keep U.S. ships from using Egyptian pilots. As for taking the case to the U.N., as many were urging, Dulles argued that the users' association could best provide "the mechanism for a kind of provisional solution which is precisely the kind the U.N. could seize hold of." It could serve as a "bargaining body vis-a-vis Egypt."

Then he struck at the crux. It was not enough in these times simply to avoid trouble, to get past a crisis. In an extemporaneous speech he pointed out movingly that if the use of force was to be forsworn, nations must join in seeking solutions that are just, as well as peaceful (see box).

The delegates were impressed. Said Sweden's Unden: "I have noted with satisfaction that the proposal has changed considerably since it was presented." But it took another long day of maneuvering until, on the third day, the rangy, loose-limbed skeleton of the Suez Canal Users' Association (S.C.U.A.) was agreed upon. Its declared purpose was "to facilitate . . . a final or provisional solution," and to "seek the cooperation of the competent Egyptian authorities," and "deal with such problems which would arise if the traffic through the canal were to diminish or cease." Recourse would be had to the U.N. "whenever it seems that this would facilitate a settlement." Its membership was opened to the 18 user nations plus any other nation which has 1,000,000 net tons of shipping passing through the canal yearly or uses it for 50% of its total foreign trade (a provision designed to exclude Russia). It will also "study forthwith means that may render it feasible to reduce dependence on the canal." This would include construction of new oil lines and wider use of large tankers.

S.C.U.A. remains loose and only mildly binding, but it provides the canal users with a body that can negotiate with Nasser, move on to other concerted action should he block the canal or prove unable to keep it open. It does this in a manner that avoids, so far, acts that plunge the Suez crisis into full deadlock, yet leaves the Westerners free to keep moving, keep trying to make time work for them instead of for Nasser. "Nasser," explained one Lancaster House diplomat, "is facing in the long run a whole series of develop ments which will affect the Egyptian economy. His economy is deteriorating now. The long term is going to weigh more heavily than the fact that there will still be a lot of traffic in the canal. You don't always have to wait until it actually works, either, for often you get results when people see that it is going to work." Whether or not Nasser already saw that it was going to work, he showed at least a few signs of uneasiness. In Cairo drugs, cigarettes and whisky disappeared from counters, and merchants tucked rare items away for special customers. The official newspaper Al Shaab proclaimed: "We must now prepare for economic war." And there was restive stirring among Nasser's Arab supporters. In Saudi Arabia King Saud invited his old enemy King Feisal of Iraq to Dammam, presumably to discuss their mutual worries over the cost of Western displeasure to their oil revenues. At week's end Nasser hastily left Cairo for Dammam to confer with Saud and Syria's President Kuwatly. By happenstance, that great compromiser and neutralist Jawaharlal Nehru was flying in from India on a long-scheduled visit, might or might not confer with Nasser in the palace of the Arabian King.

Deflated Tires. With the terms set, all but three of the 18 nations--Iran, Pakistan, and Ethiopia--indicated that they would join S.C.U.A., although not altogether happily. For both Britain's Eden and France's Mollet, the agreement represented a climb-down--though from an admittedly unsteady perch. In Britain the Tory press was outraged. The Daily Mail charged that Dulles had pulled the rug from under Britain's feet. The august Times wrote: "Mr. Dulles soon deflated the tires of the new vehicle. The plan has been changed and weakened out of all recognition." France was even more irate. French officials talked of "sellout" and "bitter deception" and blamed the U.S. Said the usually neutralist-minded Le Monde: "If it is grave to go to Munich, it is even more so to go there after having sworn a hundred times to do the opposite." Premier Guy Mollet, who only six weeks before had told the cheering Assembly that "we shall impose" international control on Nasser if he persisted in his rejection of it, urgently telephoned Foreign Minister Christian Pineau in London and ordered him to refuse to sign. After an emergency Cabinet meeting Saturday to hear Pineau's report, Mollet announced that France would join S.C.U.A. only with the explicit reservation that "France intends to conserve her liberty of action."

Even as Dulles flew back to the U.S. proclaiming that the conference had made "solid gains," the French and British threw the case into the U.N. The two asked the Security Council to hold an urgent debate of Egypt's "unilateral" act as a "manifest threat to international peace and security."

No one expected that Russia, with its veto power, would let the Security Council take any action, either to undo or punish Nasser's seizure. The U.S. was surprised at the timing, but acquiesced. Said Dulles: "This is an interdependent world, and you cannot thrive and prosper if you deny the principle of interdependence." Taking the case to the U.N. was another way of airing the West's concern, of impressing the world with its urgency and of seeking a settlement by means rooted not in the jungle but in law.

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