Advance and Retreat

In its clash with Congress over the conduct of foreign policy, the Ford Administration has achieved one tentative advance and suffered one major setback.

TURKEY. The Administration's drive to resume U.S. military sales to Turkey, backed in the Senate by a one-vote margin last May, picked up momentum in the House. This came after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger pleaded his case to 125 members over cocktails and President Ford discussed the matter with 140 Representatives at breakfast. Ford endorsed a compromise bill offered by Pennsylvania Democrat Thomas E. Morgan. Rather than full resumption of aid, as Kissinger urged, the bill would allow Turkey to receive $51 million worth of military equipment for which it has already paid, and buy another $133 million worth of arms. Ford, in return, would have to report to Congress every 60 days on the progress in achieving a settlement between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus.

Ford called the compromise "a fair and equitable solution," but anti-aid, pro-Greece Congressmen remained bitterly opposed. Indiana Democrat John Brademas charged that approval by the House would amount to "capitulating to a form of blackmail of the U.S. Government." Turkey has threatened to close U.S. military bases if aid is not resumed this week. The Administration insisted that lifting the embargo is the only way to create a negotiating climate in which the U.S. can help achieve a Cyprus settlement. Turkey has indicated that it will not enter serious negotiations so long as it is under pressure from the U.S. on arms aid.

The chances for House approval of the compromise look good, though the vote, expected next week, may be close. Even so, the U.S. could lose some of its two dozen Turkey bases.

PANAMA. Kissinger has long urged that the U.S. give up absolute control of the Panama Canal and the ten-mile-wide Canal Zone, a quasi-U.S. colony created under a 1903 treaty. But a flag-waving lobby in Congress has stubbornly opposed renegotiation of the 19th century-style arrangement. Two weeks ago, in a move that shocked the Administration as unprecedented and possibly unconstitutional, the House voted to withhold any appropriations to pay for negotiations.

The Administration hopes the Senate will kill the measure; if it does not, a veto is likely. But one-third of the Senate has endorsed a resolution opposing changes in the Panama treaty. Since the Senate has to approve all treaties by a two-thirds majority, the Administration faces hard times in advancing toward what Kissinger described to the Panamanians as "a new and more modern relationship between our two countries."

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