Diplomats at Work

Into Foggy Bottom one day last week tramped stormy-faced Soviet Ambassador Georgy N. Zarubin for an interview with Secretary of State Dulles. It was obvious, as Zarubin cooled his heels in the State Department's fifth-floor reception room, that something was on his mind beside the new Kremlin policy of smiles. Ushered into Dulles' office, he protested angrily that four times in early July and four times last April U.S. planes based in West Germany had "deliberately" penetrated the air space over Baltic Russia--"some for more than 2 1/2 hours" and by as much as 214 miles. He got a polite but short (ten minutes) hearing.

Dulles later told his press conference that he knew "nothing about the matter whatsoever," had referred the complaint to Defense with the request that it report back. Publicly, the Air Force replied that Zarubin could not have been talking about USAF planes because "no USAF planes have been flying over Soviet territory." Privately, U.S. airmen expressed surprise at the charges. In the past, the trigger-jumpy Russians have first shot down non-Communist planes in the vicinity of their borders, lodged their protests afterwards. If a U.S. plane had indeed been over Soviet territory for 2 1/2 hours, it was a revealing insight into the state of Soviet defenses.

Other areas where U.S. diplomacy was at work last week:

Israel. In an hour-long interview Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban sought to persuade Dulles that Premier David Ben-Gurion's dismissal of moderate Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett did not mean a return to the policy of answering Arab raids with reprisals-in-force. State, unconvinced, thinks that news reports quoting Ben-Gurion as having threatened Jordan with armed retaliation (in defiance of the U.N. armistice agreement) for border raids indicate the fiery Premier's thinking more clearly than Eban does.

North Africa. Assigned to Rabat, capital of newly free Morocco as the first U.S. ambassador: Cavendish Welles Cannon, 61, onetime schoolteacher, longtime Foreign Service careerman and specialist on the Balkans and Middle East, since 1953 U.S. Ambassador to Greece. Shy, hard-working Cavendish Cannon will have plenty to do at Rabat. In prospect for the U.S. are tough negotiations with Morocco over the future of four major U.S. bomber bases. Another delicate problem: Morocco is being courted by 1) Egypt to join its "neutralist" sphere of influence, 2) Iraq, worried by Egyptian expansionism, to link up with the pro-Western Baghdad Pact. State is not passing out advice to Morocco in such a delicate situation, but "believes" that the Moroccans will want to stick to an independent role to get maximum leverage in the air-base negotiations.

East Europe. Communist Rumania flagged Washington that it accepts in principle the Eisenhower plan for a wider "people-to-people" exchange with Soviet bloc countries and the mutual establishment of information (books, periodicals) centers. Noted with interest by State: Rumania accepted, even though Moscow's Pravda has charged that the information-center plan is part of a U.S. effort to carry out espionage.

Red China. In Geneva the marathon talks between the U.S. and Communist China over the release of Chinese-held U.S. prisoners and "other practical matters at issue" entered their twelfth month. Principal result to date: eight of the 19 prisoners have been released.

Southeast Asia. Pakistan, hard-hit by a rice famine, asked the U.S. to set up a food bank stocked with 1.000,000 tons of wheat and rice in Pakistani territory. From it Pakistan and other countries in the region could borrow in emergencies. For a U.S. burdened by wheat and rice surpluses, the plan was attractive if it could be carried out without disrupting Southeast Asia's touchy rice economy. At State the Pak-plan was taken "under active consideration."

The Atom. Answering pleas by India, Yugoslavia and Russia that the U.S. stop testing nuclear weapons, U.S. Delegate (to the U.N. Disarmament Commission) James J. Wadsworth last week replied that 1) the tests "do not constitute a hazard" when properly conducted; 2) the U.S., in the interests of its own and free world security, will continue the tests until agreement is reached to limit nuclear weapons "under proper safeguards."

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