Jimmy's Journey: Mostly Pluses

Despite gaffes, he cemented ties with India and soothed Sadat

Inevitably, it is the glitches that will be remembered. The fumbles in Warsaw by two interpreters who seemed unable to convert Jimmy Carter's English into accurate Polish. The live TV mike in New Delhi that enabled pool reporters to hear the President undiplomatically instructing Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to send a "cold and very blunt" note to Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai about his nuclear policy. The dinner in the same capital dominated by a singleminded flycatcher who hovered behind Carter until --swat!--he nailed his prey and plucked it daintily from the linen. The Secret Service walkie-talkie conversations that somehow got broadcast over a microphone in the Casino de Paris in the midst of rehearsals by topless cancan dancers. All in all, said the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Carter has "proved that he can do with words what Gerald Ford used to do with his forehead against door sills."*

Up to a point, Carter was virtually inviting that kind of criticism with a trip that had no clearcut goals and was grievously overloaded (seven nations, three continents and 18,500 miles, all in the space of nine days). Yet even as Air Force One returned the President and his wife to Andrews Air Force Base at week's end, the gaffes were beginning to fall into proper perspective. Amused Poles were now laughing at the translation goof that seemed to have Carter saying that their desires for the future were carnal. Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell indicated a relaxed White House attitude with the crack that Carter "only lusts after Poles in his heart." Similarly, Carter's unwittingly public criticism of Desai for refusing to accept U.S. conditions on the purchase of uranium did not offend the Indian leader. Oddly enough, the episode proved a political plus for both men: it showed Desai's countrymen that he had not bowed to the U.S. President, and it also demonstrated to Americans that Carter means business in his efforts to control nuclear proliferation. The fly incident led the Boston Herald American to praise "India's intrepid Sultan of Swat, the fly chaser who refused to give up even when Jimmy Carter and Morarji Desai got in his way." As for the Secret Service's not-so-secret conversations, agents explained that they happened to be using the same frequency as the Casino de Paris' stage sound system and, besides, no hush-hush security measures are ever broadcast via walkie-talkies.

If the Carter trip fell far short of the public relations triumph that the President and his aides had hoped for, it nonetheless produced some benefits. To many Poles, the fact that a U.S. President could be barraged publicly in Warsaw by blunt questions from American reporters was an eye-opener in that regimented nation. Even more surprising, the government-controlled TV broadcast a tape of Carter's unprecedented 30-minute press conference in toto. On the Middle East, Carter had created an unnecessary problem for himself on the eve of his trip by seeming to endorse the Israeli position on Palestine in a chat with TV reporters. But his visits with the Shah of Iran, Jordan's King Hussein, Saudi Arabia's King Khalid and Crown Prince Fahd and, most significantly, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, seemed to set the peace negotiations back on their precarious course.

In New Delhi, despite disagreement over nuclear policies, he gave impetus to the growing friendliness in relations between India and the U.S. In Paris, with parliamentary elections coming in March, he did a little stumping for a grateful President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and squeezed in a meeting with Giscard's chief rival, Socialist Leader Franc,ois Mitterrand, in the bargain.

For the Carters, last week began in Tehran, where Rosalynn fulfilled a wish expressed to her husband several weeks ago. With whom would she like to celebrate the new year, the President asked. Said Rosalynn: "The Shah of Iran and Empress Farah"--a surprising reply for a populist First Lady. With 1978 properly rung in at Tehran's Niavaran Pal ace, the odyssey continued as Air Force One and its two sister 707 jets, jammed with 166 paying press passengers, headed for New Delhi.

The India visit started badly. Carter's planners had hoped to attract something like the capacity audience Dwight Eisenhower addressed in 1959 at the Ram Lila Grounds, a 19-acre ceremonial area that can hold some 275,000 people. But Desai does not follow the crowd-collecting tactics of his predecessors, who trucked spectators in from miles around and paid them small fees to attend. Only 50,000 showed up--all voluntarily--and Carter's flat delivery and uninspired message drew mostly a bored silence.

The President recovered brilliantly in the circular, British-built Parliament House, where he stuck to a carefully crafted text that drew eloquent comparisons between the struggles for full democracy in the U.S. and India. Members of Parliament broke the chamber's silence 23 times with desk-thumping, foot-stamping applause.

Both India and the U.S. have discovered, Carter said, that "human needs are inseparable from human rights--that while civil and political liberties are good in themselves, they are much more useful and much more meaningful in the lives of people to whom physical survival is not a matter of daily anxiety."

Carter moved from India's fight against poverty to U.S. racial problems.

"When I was growing up on a farm in the state of Georgia, in the heart of the southern United States, an invisible wall of racial segregation stood between me and my black playmates. It seemed then as if that wall between us would exist forever." With his audience hushed, Carter continued: "But it did not stand forever. It crumbled and fell. And though the rubble has not yet been completely removed, it no longer separates us from one another, blighting the lives of those on both sides of it." That breakthrough came, Carter said, largely because Martin Luther King Jr., "a spiritual son of Mahatma Gandhi," had taken "Gandhi's concepts of nonviolence and truth-force--and put them to work in the American South."

At the insistence of Desai, who wanted to show that his government cares deeply about raising rural living standards, Carter and his wife visited the village of Daulatpur (pop. 1,907), about 15 miles south of New Delhi. It had temporarily been renamed Carter-Poori (Carter-Place) in the American's honor. After receiving the Hindu religious tilak mark on their foreheads, the Carters met villagers. A woman of 80, squatting against a white courtyard wall, did not stir as the President was introduced to her. Carter lightly held her hand. "You see now how they live," said Desai. "I see," said Carter. "I understand."

For the most part, Carter and Desai got along well as they discussed international economics, relations with the U.S.S.R. and superpower rivalries in the Indian Ocean. One impressed Indian official said of the talks that Carter "went through 75 minutes, without notes, and he showed a total command of all the problems he raised." The one disagreement was over Carter's insistence that India must be ready to comply with a law that Congress is expected to pass requiring on-site inspection of any nuclear materials the U.S. sells to other nations. Desai just as adamantly insisted that as a matter of "self-respect" India cannot accept such inspection--at least until the U.S. and U.S.S.R. start reducing their own nuclear stockpiles. Carter agreed to sell India the heavy water and uranium that it needs for its nuclear reactors. Whether a sharp letter from Secretary of State Vance will follow is now uncertain because of the overheard remark. Asked what he would do if he received such a letter, Desai said diplomatically, "I would not regard it as cold or blunt."

India's refusal to accept U.S.-dictated safeguards on nuclear materials to prevent their being used in the production of weapons contrasted with Iran's attitude. In Tehran the week before, the Shah agreed to accept such controls, and Carter in turn approved Iran's request to buy up to eight American nuclear reactors. If the sale did not seem to square with Carter's nonproliferation policy, the White House could argue that, to the contrary, it gave the U.S. new leverage in applying safeguards.

When the Carter party flew into Riyadh, the prime topic of discussion was the impending resumption of talks between Egypt and Israel at the Prime Minister level. The Saudi Arabian King and Crown Prince remained unwilling to join the peacemaking process until more progress was made on the general principles of any settlement. When the talks turned to energy, the Saudis apparently hinted that they could not hold the current line on oil prices unless something was done to check the sliding foreign value of the U.S. dollar. Their position gave further incentive for dramatic action in Washington to do just that.

Rosalynn did not join her husband for dinner with Khalid and Fahd because women in Saudi Arabia are excluded from affairs of state; she was the guest instead at a dinner given by Queen Sitta. The President, surrounded by hosts wearing kaffiyehs and burnooses, dined on fish and barbecued lamb in the Prince's palace as

Bedouin warriors armed with rifles and curved daggers stood guard.

The next stop was Egypt's Aswan, site of the huge Soviet-built dam that stands as a reminder of the late 1950s and '60s, when Moscow and Cairo were on friendly terms. U.S. officials insisted that this stopover was announced at the last minute because Carter's visit with Hussein had not been confirmed and the President wanted the Jordanian's views before seeing Sadat again. The visit, these officials added unconvincingly, only incidentally involved the fact that Sadat was concerned about Carter's pretrip press conference statement.

To all outward appearances, Carter and Sadat got along chummily, exchanging jokes and embraces with enthusiasm. Their meeting took place in a rundown airport-terminal building, spruced up with new rugs and posh furniture. Also on hand to greet Carter was West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who was visiting Sadat. After a ten-minute meeting with Carter, Schmidt discreetly withdrew; less discreet were West German officials in Bonn who unreasonably complained about the failure of Carter to spend more time with the Chancellor.

When Carter and Sadat emerged from :heir 45-minute private talk, they were smiling broadly once again, and Sadat announced happily that "we have agreed on certain steps to keep the momentum in the peace process." He did not say what those steps were. Carter's own comments were designed to be ambiguous enough to bridge the current Egypt-Israeli stances on Palestine and provide negotiating room. As soon as he was aloft again en route to Paris, Carter telephoned Israel Premier Menachem Begin to report encouragingly on his conversation with Sadat.

The rest of the trip was almost wholly ceremonial. After the obligatory stop in Paris at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Carter did an abbreviated replay of last January's Pennsylvania Avenue walkathon. He strolled several blocks down the Champs-Elysees with President Giscard, even worrying his Secret Service protectors by striding into curbside crowds. The next day he helicoptered to Normandy and walked along Omaha Beach--site of some of D-day's heaviest fighting--and laid a wreath at the American military cemetery where 9,386 casualties of that epic assault are buried.

The two heads of state next plunged into a friendly crowd jamming a square in the small town of Bayeux, where Carter grasped outreached hands in U.S. campaign style. They then boarded a train for the three-hour return trip to Paris through the serene winter countryside, riding in a railroad car decorated by Mme. Pompidou for Queen Elizabeth's 1974 visit. The Carters and Giscard consumed a seven-course meal with three wines while on the rails. Shortly after their arrival in Paris, they were obliged to consume another sumptuous meal, this one four courses with three wines, served in the dazzling Grand Trianon, a 17th century chateau at Versailles. To the chagrin of traditionalists, dress for the affair was neither white tie nor black tie but--helas! --dark suits. Carter, it seems, did not want to pack formal wear for the trip, so many of the 130 dinner guests and the 5,000 guests invited to a reception afterward had to put their tuxedos back in mothballs.

If the dress was informal, the rest of the scene was decidedly elegant. The Carters strolled wide-eyed through the Palace of Versailles, including Marie Antoinette's bedroom. They were so absorbed that they arrived late for the reception. Said Le Monde of the mob scene: "The Hall of Mirrors has not known such a brawl since revolutionary days." Sighed Carter next morning: "I think yesterday was one of the best days of my life."

But there was little time to enjoy the euphoria. Having given Giscard a significant electoral boost, Carter tried to balance accounts a bit by meeting Mitterrand too. He used the occasion to warn the Socialist leader that the U.S. would not look kindly upon any move by Mitterrand to bring the Communists into greater power in France. Carter also irritated Gaullist Leader Jacques Chirac, who is mayor of Paris. Pleading a lack of time, the President failed to call at city hall. Even Leonid Brezhnev, Chirac huffily noted, had squeezed in a visit.

During a seven-hour dash through Brussels, Carter visited Belgium's King Baudouin and paid the first personal call ever by a U.S. President at the European Commission, which directs the activities of the Common Market. There he and Commission President Roy Jenkins reaffirmed mutual intentions to avoid any protectionist war between the U.S. and the Common Market. The dollar's recent instability and common energy problems also were discussed, as was the need to maintain the dialogue between developed and developing nations. Carter's final stop was at NATO headquarters, where he tried to ease fears that the U.S. might bargain away European defense interests in a SALT pact with the Soviet Union.

Heading home over the Atlantic, a tired and tieless Carter answered questions from pool reporters as Rosalynn sat on the cabin floor, leaning her head against her husband's leg--and dozing off as he answered questions. Carter frankly admitted that "the trip was symbolic." He thought he had "put forward the image of a nation that is strong and secure and self-confident, but which doesn't have to prove its strength by taking advantage of other nations that are not as strong or as secure as we are."

In a sense, the trip might have been more important in terms of Jimmy Carter's on-the-job education than in terms of concrete accomplishments. Reported TIME Correspondent Stanley Cloud: "Carter cannot help being changed by his experiences abroad. He has seen the poverty of India, the grimness of Poland, the civilized beauty of France. Conversations with the likes of Prime Minister Desai of India and President Giscard of France will enhance his sophistication in foreign affairs. People were interested in Carter, seemed to like him and respect him. He did not excite them or move them. Yet he seemed to leave every country with a better feeling about him and the U.S. than it had when he arrived."

And now, back to work--until spring, when Carter wings off again, this time to Venezuela. Brazil and Nigeria for Part II of this serialized odyssey.

* In Texas, the Austin American-Statesman offered a variation on that theme. "Oh well," said an editorial, "one thing Carter doesn't have to worry about --he's too short to hit his head on helicopter doorframes."

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