Putting the Question

The London conference on the Suez Canal, which began in angry futility, ended with a far greater sense of agreement than anyone expected, and with so reasonable a case that Egypt's Dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser found it hard to denounce out of hand. The agreement and the moderation were personal triumphs for the U.S.'s John Foster Dulles. As he winged home to Washington, his performance was acclaimed by European diplomats who hitherto have been able to contain their admiration for the Secretary. He had set an unfailingly conciliatory tone, in contrast to the original hot anger of the French and British, and, tirelessly revising his international-control plan to meet the reservations of the new Asian nations. built up the wide backing that would make it harder for Nasser to refuse the heart of his proposal--to insulate the Suez Canal from any nation's politics.

In the end, 18 nations, controlling 95% of Suez shipping, supported Dulles' plan, and of the four opposing (India, Ceylon, Indonesia, Russia), only Russia questioned its good faith. Even India's Krishna Menon, who had pushed an alternative plan giving control of the canal to Egypt, wound up saying "we will be only too happy" if the majority plan leads to a settlement. The one diehard of the conference turned out to be Russia's freshman Minister of Foreign Affairs Dimitry Shepilov, whose smiles, dinner parties and fine talk of "international cooperation" had raised Western hopes of a broad settlement in the conference's first days.

Voice of the Past. Shepilov to the end attacked Dulles' proposals as "an effort to reimpose colonialism on Egypt," and held out against an innocuous Indonesian proposal for a closing communique, thus managing to alienate even his associates in opposition. Conceivably some of Shepilov's tactics were the result of diplomatic inexperience, and they hurt him with fellow diplomats who found him, at least as a table companion, infinitely preferable to his predecessor, "Stony Bottom" Molotov. Shepilov displayed a greater Soviet interest in exploiting the naked political possibilities of trouble than in solving the problem that had brought them together. His ambition seemed to be to make it hard for Nasser to negotiate on the majority plan.

The Five Trappists. Over the monotonous objections of Shepilov. the majority appointed a five-nation committee (Australia, Sweden, Ethiopia. Iran, the U.S.) to take its proposals to Nasser. Thus the conference ended on a note of suspense. Australia's Prime Minister Robert Menzies was named chairman. Deputy Undersecretary of State Loy Henderson the U.S. representative. Menzies, who earlier in the week had been riding to conference sessions with a TV set in his limousine so as not to miss a minute of the Australia v. England cricket matches, pronounced his committee's task so delicate that "we should all be as silent as Trappist monks." By week's end Cairo intimated that Nasser would receive the conference's proposals "as a matter of courtesy." Britain's Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd was asked what would happen if Nasser should reject their proposals. Said Lloyd: "I hope that is precisely the question he is asking himself."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.