Points for Peace

President Dwight Eisenhower moved quickly down the main aisle of the United Nations' General Assembly chamber, nodding and smiling at the applause. He mounted the central dais, sat down on the high-backed blue chair that the U.N. brings out for special visitors. Introduced by New Zealand's Sir Leslie Munro. president of the General Assembly, President Eisenhower stepped up to the dark green marble lectern, laid down an open notebook, and began his first United Nations address since his historic Atoms for Peace speech five years ago. In 1953 the President stirred hearts and minds with an eloquent plea that the wonders of atomic science be "not dedicated to man's death but consecrated to his life.'' This time he had an even more urgent task: to set forth, for the world to hear and heed, U.S. policy toward the brawling, broiling Middle East.

More than Retort. Painstaking work, with six rewritings between first draft and final text, went into the President's speech. Resolved that any speech he delivered to the General Assembly would be more than a mere retort to Soviet accusations. Ike called in C. D. Jackson, a vice president of TIME, Inc. and wartime civilian member of General Eisenhower's SHAEF staff, who had helped write the Atoms for Peace speech.

Jackson revised his first major draft in keeping with suggestions by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Draft No. 2 got a thorough going-over at an all-day Sunday session at Dulles' house by a team made up of Treasury Secretary Robert B. Anderson, Deputy Under Secretary of State Douglas Dillon, Assistant Secretary of State William Rountree and State Department Counselor G. Frederick Reinhardt, along with Dulles and Jackson. President Eisenhower and Dulles, working together at the White House, edited the next draft. After retyping, this edited version underwent still another Eisenhower tooling. The White House secretarial staff again typed the manuscript, just in time for Ike's departure for New York, the evening before he delivered his speech.

Whisked from the White House lawn to Washington National Airport by a Marine Corps helicopter, President Eisenhower flew to New York in Columbine III, sped to Park Avenue's Waldorf-Astoria in his bubble-top Lincoln. In his 35th-floor

Waldorf suite that night, the President, Dulles and Jackson sat around a coffee table, editing the speech once more. Finally the President leaned back. Said he: "That finishes it."

Desperate Call. Before the Si-nation General Assembly the President struck hard at what he called "ballistic blackmail": the Soviet Union's rocket-rattling and "brink-of-catastrophe" alarms after the U.S. landing in Lebanon. "In most communities," said President Eisenhower, "it is illegal to cry 'fire' in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims? Pressures such as these will never be successfully practiced against America, but they do create dangers which could affect each and every one of us."

The U.S. landing-an Lebanon, he continued, was a response to a "desperate call" from that country's lawful government. On the principle that "aggression, direct or indirect, must be checked," the U.S. reserves "the right to answer the legitimate appeal of any nation, particularly small nations." But the U.S. "seeks always to keep within the spirit of the Charter." When the U.S. "responded to the urgent pleas of Lebanon, we went at once to the Security Council and sought U.N. assistance for Lebanon so as to permit the withdrawal of U.S. forces," but that approach was blocked by Soviet vetoes.

Then Dwight Eisenhower came to the heart of his speech: a broad U.S. program for Middle East peace and progress. Its six points:

1) Protect Lebanon. The veto-free General Assembly should "consider how it can assure" Lebanon's "continued independence and integrity."

2) Safeguard Jordan. The Assembly should declare "the interest of the U.N. in preserving the peace in Jordan."

3) Curb Propaganda. "An end to the fomenting from without of civil strife" is necessary to Middle East stability. The U.N. should undertake to monitor "inflammatory" radio broadcasts "directed across the national frontiers" in the troubled Middle East. The President avoided naming names, but every delegate in the Assembly knew that he had in mind the recklessly subversive outpourings of Gamal Abdel Nasser's vitriolic Radio Cairo and Radio Damascus.

4) Set Up a U.N. Force. Needed to protect Middle East countries from armed attack and infiltration is a "standby U.N. peace force" that could "make the U.N.'s presence manifest in the area of trouble."

5) Combat Poverty. "To help the Arab countries fulfill their aspirations," the President proposed a regional economic development institution, "governed by the Arab states themselves," to which other countries would contribute money and technical assistance. If the Arab countries agree to set up such an institution and "support it with their own resources, the U.S. would also be prepared to support it" (with perhaps $100 million a year, said Administration spokesmen).

6) Slow the Arms Race. The U.N. should undertake "to see what arms control arrangements could be worked out" to curb, by voluntary agreement, the Middle East's "wasteful, dangerous competition in armaments."

The President offered no specific formulas for carrying out any of these points, but this vagueness was deliberate: it would take long and patient consultation with other delegations to work out formulas that a majority of the U.N.'s members would support--and that the Arab countries would accept. Only on point five did the President elaborate. A regional development program, he said, might make it possible to solve the Middle East's "great common shortage--water." With mid-century advances in water technology (see SCIENCE), the "ancient problem of water is on the threshold of solution. Energy, determination and science will carry it over that threshold. Another great challenge that faces the area is disease . . . Much more remains to be done."

Surly Refusal. After the deserts blossom again. President Eisenhower said, the world might see an "Arab renaissance," with modern Arab nations making contributions to civilization surpassing the Islamic advances in mathematics, astronomy and medicine during Europe's Middle Ages. Throughout his speech, the President took Arab feeling into account, tried to avoid giving any impression that the U.S. was seeking to dictate to the Arab world. He stressed that the U.S. did not want "a position of leadership" in the regional economic program, that "the goals must be Arab goals," and that Arab peoples "clearly possess the right of determining and expressing their own destiny."

But despite all the efforts to placate them, Arabs responded to the President's six-point plan with a surly refusal to discuss any constructive steps until U.S. and British troops get out of Lebanon and Jordan (see FOREIGN NEWS). Because of this foreseeable Arab attitude, plus the fact that the U.S. has only one vote out of 81, it was predictable that the General Assembly would not, at the current emergency session at least, adopt any detailed program for carrying out the U.S.'s six points. All the U.S. could expect--and all the Administration expected--was an Assembly resolution 1) calling for a U.N. "presence" in Lebanon and Jordan, 2) favorably mentioning other points in the U.S. program, however vaguely, and 3) instructing Secretary General Hammarskjold to look into the practical possibilities. That much, after protracted diplomatic debate, the U.S. will probably achieve in the U.N. this week.

But the value and results of the President's Middle East speech could not be measured solely by General Assembly resolutions. Besides proposing a Middle East program, the President set forth, in terms whose echoes should linger long, the U.S. stand in the world: firmness in the face of "ballistic blackmail," steadfast opposition to aggression, loyalty to the U.N. Charter, friendship toward other nations and readiness to help them achieve their real and legitimate aspirations.

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