Tacked to the wall of Associate Editor Burton Pines' office is an outsized map of the world, with each nation a distinct and striking hue. "Looking at a map like this one," says Pines, who occasionally glanced at it while writing his second straight cover story on the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations, "helps you take account of geopolitical realities when discussing U.S. foreign policy."

Pines first appreciated the significance of the Middle East in 1956 when, at 16, he avidly followed the Suez Crisis. Eleven years later, after earning his B.A. and master's degrees in history at the University of Wisconsin, he found himself reporting on European reaction to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war as a newly hired TIME correspondent stationed in Bonn. "By now,

the Middle East has attracted more attention than any other international story since World War II," he says. "That is what makes the success of Carter's diplomacy so astounding. For the first time, a major part of the region's troubles are close to being resolved."

Pines is also an expert on one other vital aspect of the entire Arab-Israeli confrontation: U.S. capabilities and what role they might play in the area. "In terms of U.S. defense priorities, no other region in the world, save for Western Europe, is as important," contends Pines. "It is now almost impossible for a journalist without a defense perspective to analyze events in the Middle East, especially after this settlement."

Assisting Pines in his labors was White House Correspondent Chris Ogden, who accompanied the President on his six-day diplomatic tour. "By the end of the trip, Carter seemed absolutely drained," reports Ogden, who knows the feeling himself. Carter boarded Air Force One and headed home for a well-earned rest.

But Ogden, already on a second full day without sleep, returned to Washington a half day after the President and headed for the office, where he spent the rest of the week working on the story that appears in this issue. When either Ogden or Carter is rested enough for another trip to the Middle East, he can count on Burt Pines' plotting his movements on the multicolored map.

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