Restoring a Sense of Cohesion

Vance travels to head off criticism of U.S. policy

The trip had been so hastily put together that there was not even a firm itinerary on the day of departure. But for Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, organizing a precise travel schedule was the least of his worries. With the Western alliance in disarray over its response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Vance shuttled his way through four European capitals last week in an attempt to win support for the activist U.S. position.

The whirlwind tour had become urgently necessary in the wake of the French refusal to take part in a five-nation parley with the U.S., originally scheduled for last week in Bonn. Deeply concerned about French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's coolness to U.S. diplomatic initiatives, Washington decided that even a series of bilateral talks would do more to restore a sense of cohesion within the Western alliance than no consultations at all. "There is no substitute for face to face," said one senior U.S. official on the trip. "It's a hell of a lot easier when you are sitting across a table."

At each meeting, in his lawyer-like fashion, Vance unfurled a detailed brief urging Europe to support the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics and its embargo of grain and high technology sales to the Soviet Union. Vance also called for a beefing-up of NATO and increased European military aid to Pakistan and Turkey. Above all, he preached unity, warning that the Kremlin must not be allowed to drive a wedge between the allies.

In Bonn the Secretary had to mollify some outspoken critics of U.S. moves in the post-Afghanistan era. Certain West German officials had privately derided Carter's Olympic boycott as "downright dumb." Chancellor Helmut Schmidt resented not being consulted in advance about this decision. A bare two hours' notice on the day of its announcement, he observed unsmilingly, was "a little late." The West Germans also feared serious setbacks to their international trade if they followed Carter's proscriptions on commercial dealings with Moscow.

Schmidt cordially received Vance at his Rhineside residence and termed their meeting "extraordinarily useful," but obvious U.S.-West German differences remained. While Vance stressed at a press conference that the Soviets "must pay the cost flowing from the blatant invasion of a neighboring country," Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher took a very different tack. Said he: "We must do everything we can to avoid escalation, make a political solution of the problem possible, and pursue detente."

Vance's pitch got a more sympathetic hearing in London, where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has consistently endorsed Carter's tough stance on Afghanistan. Shortly after meeting with Vance, British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington called on his fellow Europeans to unite in supporting the U.S. Said he: "There is no country in the [European] Community which doesn't know that the alliance with America is the bedrock of Europe's security. When the chips are down, we are all firmly on the side of the only superpower we have."

In contrast to that cordial support, Vance's Paris stopover was marked by a certain coolness. The Secretary of State, in fact, was still so angry over France's scuttling of the planned five-party talks that he did not even include Paris on his itinerary until the last minute. On the eve of Vance's arrival, and implicitly with his approval, U.S. Ambassador to Paris Arthur Hartman blasted the French position in a tough speech that urged Europe "not to forget what side you're on."

Neither side gave an inch during Vance's 4 1/2-hour meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean Franc,ois-Poncet. French officials remained convinced that U.S. insistence on "punishing" the Soviets would only make Moscow dig in deeper. Explained one diplomat: "The European view is that we should retain the leverage to put pressure on the Soviets because we think there's still a chance of getting them to pull out of Afghanistan."

That "European view" had been forcefully expressed two days earlier at Rome's ornate Palazzo Madama, where the nine foreign ministers of the Community had gathered for a special meeting on the Afghanistan crisis. Overcoming their own internal frictions, the ministers unanimously adopted a British-sponsored plan calling for international guarantees of Afghanistan's neutrality. In proposing the idea, Lord Carrington argued that a neutralized Afghanistan might satisfy the Soviets' concerns for their own security and permit them to withdraw their troops "without a loss of face."

The proposal seemed unlikely to satisfy either of the superpowers. A skeptical Vance endorsed it tepidly as an "important suggestion." To no one's surprise, Moscow rejected it outright. "The illogicality of such a proposal is obvious," scoffed the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia, charging that the idea had been "borrowed from across the Atlantic Ocean."

One of Washington's biggest disappointments last week was Vance's failure to win firm European commitments to the Olympic boycott. On Wednesday, the deadline President Carter had set for Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the State Department announced a "final and irrevocable" U.S. decision to boycott the Games. Officials of the U.S. Olympic Committee said they would keep their options open in hopes that a future Soviet withdrawal might yet enable their teams to participate. Although Britain has already joined the 50 countries that have promised to back the boycott, West Germany and Italy have deferred a final decision on the issue.* France remains adamantly opposed to the idea.

*An embarrassing Olympic boycott pledge of support came last week from South Africa, one of 120 countries to receive a letter from Washington urging support of the U.S. stand. The South Africans, who have been banned from all Olympic events since 1964, assured the U.S., tongue in cheek, that they would definitely not be going to Moscow this summer.

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