Bad Trip

Even after the Six-Day War of 1967, when many Arab nations blamed the U.S. for their humiliating defeat by Israel, Jordan's King Hussein continued to maintain cordial relations with Washington. His friendship was rewarded with arms, economic aid and occasional intercession to help his beleaguered government resist pressures from Israel, the Soviet Union and Egypt, as well as the Palestinian guerrillas. Last week, however, Hussein's volatile country was boiling again, and the force that inadvertently set it abubble was American.

Trampled Seal. The immediate cause of the King's discomfiture was a planned visit to Amman by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Joseph J. Sisco. Arab commandos decided to disrupt the visit to protest U.S. aid to Israel, and the King apparently chose not to stop them. Only a few days earlier, he had vetoed a fedayeen plan to bombard the Israeli seaport of Elath while that city was crowded with Passover tourists, and ordered Jordanian troops to disarm 14 rockets the guerrillas were to have used. The Sisco visit offered Hussein an opportunity to patch things up with the guerrillas by not interfering with their plans.

For three days, crowds rumbled through Amman carrying signs saying AMERICAN PHANTOMS KILL ARAB CHILDREN. Finally a mob of nearly 1,000 burned the U.S. Information Service library, while another crowd of 800 roared on to the U.S. embassy. Amman police and soldiers were nowhere to be seen. Brushing past six Bedouin guards, the crowd stormed the embassy compound, burned four official cars and replaced the American flag with the green, black and red emblem of Palestine. As a parting gesture, the demonstrators ripped the Seal of the U.S. from the embassy's wall, paraded it through Amman, then trampled on it and smashed it.

Sisco, who was in Jerusalem meeting Israeli officials, decided to "defer" his Jordanian visit. At the same time, U.S. Ambassador to Jordan Harrison M. Symmes delivered a stinging note to the Amman government, protesting its failure to protect U.S. property and demanding prompt and full compensation. Jordan responded by demanding the recall of Symmes, a veteran foreign service officer who has spent 23 years in Arab countries. From Jerusalem Sisco traveled via Nicosia to Beirut, where anti-American students set the mood for his visit by throwing stones at the U.S. embassy, and then Teheran, the next scheduled stops after Amman on his eight-day visit.

Lack of Optimism. Sisco's trip, his first to the area since he became the chief U.S. Middle East negotiator 15 months ago, was intended to improve relations between the U.S. and the Arabs and to probe for peace possibilities. But the demonstrations did nothing to improve relations, and Sisco found his hosts generally pessimistic about peace. He and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser spent nearly two hours together at Nasser's Manshiet al Bakri residence near the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. Nasser concurred that a political solution was necessary in the Middle East but he was obviously disappointed that the U.S. official had come bearing no new proposals.

In Israel, Sisco urged his hosts to be more flexible. He suggested, for example, that if they merely used the word withdrawal in talking about an eventual exodus from captured Arab territories, the Arabs might respond favorably. Despite Sisco's recommendations, "withdrawal" apparently remains a proscribed word among Israeli officials.

In his meetings with Sisco, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban reiterated his government's feeling that it is time for the Arabs to make a gesture toward peace. In a similar vein, Eban told TIME Correspondent Marlin Levin shortly before Sisco's visit: "We can't go on playing chess by making all the moves. We have made all the moves."

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