Men in Motion: Something Going On

Men in Motion:

THE sensitive diplomatic circuitry that links Washington, Peking, Moscow and Paris was fairly sputtering last week. First the chief American delegate to the suspended Paris peace talks, Ambassador William Porter, returned to his post after several weeks' absence and sounded a relatively optimistic note upon arrival. He carefully avoided suggestions that any new development had taken place concerning the talks, but he stressed that President Richard Nixon is "intensely interested" in reaching a negotiated settlement. The U.S. had previously insisted that it would stay away from the talks unless there was some sign of serious North Vietnamese interest in negotiations. A day or two earlier, it had been reported that Hanoi's chief negotiator, Xuan Thuy, was also on his way back to Paris with new instructions.

At the same time, Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny journeyed to Hanoi for talks with North Vietnamese leaders. But what lent extraordinary interest to those diplomatic travels was the news of another mission: only four days after he had returned from a visit to Tokyo, Presidential Adviser Henry Kissinger left Washington for Peking.

Clearly something fascinating was going on--probably focusing on Viet Nam--even if the various journeys were not specifically connected. The White House insisted that Kissinger's latest jaunt was merely a follow-up to the Peking summit and would deal with "the normalization of relations" between China and the U.S. But White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler added tantalizingly that the discussions would not deal with "routine matters," and high Administration officials said privately that there was definitely a link between Porter's return to Paris and Kissinger's return to Peking. Another Nixon emissary, globetrotting former Treasury Secretary John Connally, meanwhile, will be in the South Pacific this week on his way to Southeast Asia.

For once, Henry Kissinger had taken special care to inform the Japanese of his forthcoming China visit. Mending fences in Tokyo, he had generously apologized for last year's shokku when the Japanese were not told of President Nixon's impending visit to the Chinese capital. "We failed to anticipate the extent of Japanese reaction," he explained. He met with Premier Eisaku Sato--who later in the week announced his expected retirement (TIME, June 19). Kissinger also talked with 85 distinguished Japanese ranging from government officials and opposition politicians to businessmen, intellectuals and journalists. He reiterated the reasons for Nixon's new China policy, and he assured the Japanese that the U.S. does not want Japan to go nuclear. Then, instead of flying on to Peking, which would have made Tokyo look like a way station, he accorded extra emphasis to the importance of his notably successful visit to Japan by flying home first before recrossing the Pacific.

On the surface, it was surprising that the Chinese would welcome Kissinger when North Viet Nam is being badly hurt by intensive U.S. air strikes (see THE WORLD). A week earlier, Peking had sharply attacked the U.S. for its bombing in Viet Nam--some of which has taken place within a few seconds' flying time of the Chinese border. Washington dismissed Peking's comments as intended to mollify the North Vietnamese, who would rightly interpret Kissinger's welcome in Peking as a slap at them. But many China experts believed Peking was genuinely warning Washington that the Chinese must not be pushed too far. For the moment, however, they evidently had no intention of allowing the U.S. bombing and mining of North Viet Nam to damage the progress toward better U.S.-Chinese relations. Like the Soviets, they have privately expressed their disapproval of both Hanoi's invasion of the South and its rigidity at the bargaining table. The effect of both the Peking and Moscow summits has been to isolate Hanoi, and last week's events reminded the North Vietnamese of this fact. "It's a strange sight watching three big powers move in on one small one," remarked a senior U.S. official, "especially when two of its protectors are involved."

First Steps. Kissinger's visit also helped dispel, at least for the moment, a fresh spate of rumors that Chairman Mao Tse-tung was seriously ill or even dying. Mao has not appeared in public since the Nixon trip last February, and has failed to greet two recent visitors --Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre and Lois Wheeler Snow, widow of Author Edgar Snow--whom he might ordinarily have received. But most China experts, though they agree that Mao may be indisposed, reason that if he were seriously ill, Kissinger simply would not have been invited to Peking.

Nor would he have been welcome if the Chinese leadership were engaged in a serious foreign policy debate. There probably was a recent meeting of the Chinese Central Committee--all of China's important leaders dropped out of sight during the first week of June --but it may well have dealt with domestic problems like the gap in the party leadership created by the fall of Defense Minister Lin Piao and five other members of the Politburo last year.

Do the travels of Kissinger and Podgorny have a common goal? The idea persists--nourished by oblique clues like Nixon's failure to mention South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu in his announcement of the mining of North Viet Nam's harbors last month--that the first steps of some grand design might be taking place.

Podgorny can be expected to give his hosts a report of sorts on the Moscow summit, and to discuss the problem of getting Soviet supplies to Hanoi while North Vietnamese harbors are mined--as well as to offer a few soothing words about why Moscow reacted so mildly to the mining in the first place. Moscow is miffled at the Chinese refusal to let Russian ships and supplies to North Viet Nam move through South China ports and railways, and Soviet party officials are being told that "there is nothing good in relations" between Moscow and Peking just now.

But Podgorny's trip, like Kissinger's, could also be an effort to determine whether there exists a middle ground between the U.S. and North Vietnamese attitudes toward a settlement. As if to demonstrate its tacit approval of the Podgorny mission, the U.S. last week suspended its bombing raids to the Hanoi area for the duration of the visit.

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