Sauce and Ceremony

At the White House dinner honoring French President Georges Pompidou last week, the salmon was blanketed with a light and creamy "Lafayette Sauce." The talks during Pompidou's three-day Washington visit were garnished with globs of the same. The Gallic leader's facile speeches were studded with admiring references to Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Dwight Eisenhower. "Your independence and your Constitution have given an unprecedented brilliance and magnetic force to liberty, to the rights of man and to democracy."' he told a joint session of Congress. In return, Richard Nixon glowed that he and his guest "talk the same language," that Lafayette "lives in our hearts," that both the revolutionary marquis and the French President are sons of Auvergne, that France is "our oldest friend and oldest ally in Europe."

The White House even went so far as to call Nixon's conversations with Pompidou "about the best he ever had" with a foreign leader. The meetings did establish an unusually good personal rapport between Nixon and Pompidou. But all the diplomatic sauce could not conceal the slightly bitter flavor of U.S.French relations. In fact, the visit seemed to underscore the differences between the two nations on Viet Nam and the Middle East.

Past Agonies. The conversations, to be sure, covered a variety of less sensitive subjects. The two Presidents were agreed on the desirability of pursuing negotiations with the Soviet Union, the Eastern European states and China. In some areas, Pompidou sought to erase resentments caused by his haughty predecessor, Charles de Gaulle. It was clear that Franco-American relations have become less contentious in the area of finance; Pompidou urged strengthening of the dollar as the keystone of the international monetary system. But the

French President was less than scrutable on the old question of British entry into the Common Market (see WORLD).

In their private conversations, Pompidou praised Nixon's troop withdrawals from Viet Nam, but gently suggested that the pace was too slow. Before Congress, he alluded to his government's belief that the U.S. has failed to meet Hanoi halfway. "At times we have regretted its length," he said of the peace conference, "and wondered whether the paths followed have always been the speediest and surest." Aware of the Administration's reluctance to appear the loser in Viet Nam, he mentioned France's past agonies of pride over Southeast Asia and Algeria. The end of the war in Viet Nam for the U.S., he said, "will be the most precious of victories--a victory won over oneself."

But the Pompidou visit was dominated by mutual consciousness of FrancoAmerican differences over the Middle East. France holds that Israel should withdraw from territories captured in the 1967 war as a precondition to any settlement and still believes that the Big Four can lead the way to a solution. The U.S. now tends to view both these arguments as unrealistic. The discussions were lengthy and polite and followed expected patterns. Not so predictable was the attention attracted by Mme. Pompidou's variable hemlines (see MODERN LIVING). As Pompidou left for Cape Kennedy, San Francisco, Chicago and New York City, top diplomats of both nations emphasized that the U.S. and France remained as far apart as ever on the Mideast.

One source of the Administration's displeasure with France, at least, was played down last week. Since the U.S. had earlier communicated its concern over the recent French decision to sell 108 Mirage jets to Libya, Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers refrained from making a point of it again --though pro-Israeli demonstrators reminded Pompidou with placards and curses that at least some Americans are holding a grudge. The French President played along with his host by making no complaint about Israel's request to buy 24 Phantom and 80 Skyhawk jet planes from the U.S. Though Pompidou arrived believing that the U.S.-Is-raeli aircraft deal is set, American officials have been saying that the timing, size and terms of the transaction are not settled.

Finally, Pompidou sought to find common cause with the U.S. on a loftier level. France's drive to develop economic wealth, he noted, "has no other purpose than that of serving man, of allowing him to develop his personality by freeing him from the restraints of poverty and the gnawing worries of tomorrow." The alliance, he suggested, can be renewed by common attacks on urban problems. That theme has already entered the calculations of American policymakers searching for enduring points of transatlantic interest.

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