The Slow-Grinding Mills

The Suez crisis, already drifted away from the bluster of war talk, floated at last into the slow-grinding mills of negotiation. Nine weeks after Egypt's seizure of the canal, the parties to the dispute were still hostile, still unyielding. But they came together in the United Nations Security Council for the first face-to-face attempt to whittle down their differences. Said Britain's Selwyn Lloyd: "I consider this a test of the ability of the U.N. to achieve justice and uphold international law without recourse to violence."

It was perhaps unfair to stake the U.N.'s reputation on its ability to settle a dispute whose antagonists insist there is no settlement but their own, but there was reasonable expectation that Security Council maneuvering might clear away debris for further dickering in other, more private channels. The big powers wheeled their big guns to the scene--Foreign Ministers Christian Pineau from Paris and Selwyn Lloyd from London, John Foster Dulles from Washington and, for his first appearance in the U.N. spotlight, Russia's new Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov.

Long Spoon. Although they hoped to move in concert as the debate progressed, in the U.N. preliminaries the U.S. and its Anglo-French allies did not start in step. It had been John Foster Dulles' idea to hold off appealing to the U.N. until the new Suez Canal Users' Association (TIME, Sept. 24) could be launched in London this week. The French, unenthusiastic about the users' association, wanted to lodge their appeal to the U.N. before Egypt. So did the British. They did so by 24 hours. They differed again when the U.S., to Anglo-French disappointment, cast the deciding vote for debate of Egypt's countercomplaint as well as the Anglo-French complaint. After that, however, diplomats of the three Western powers got together in efforts to seek one common objective in the Security Council --a resolution that will budge Egypt's Nasser back toward internationalization of control of the canal. The problem there was not merely to persuade Nasser but also the Russians, whose U.N. veto is a long spoon that can keep the dispute stirred up for as long as it stays in the U.N.

Long Pull. The prelude to the debate at least was calm. Under Nasser's control the Suez Canal was operating without interruption, and Western shippers canceled the 15% cargo-rate hike ordered in expectation of detoured voyages. The Western-controlled International Monetary Fund allowed Egypt an emergency $15 million advance to buy food. At the desert city of Riyadh, after 10,000 Arabs ignored King Saud and Syria's President Kuwatly to shriek "Ya Eesh Gamal" (Long Live Gamal), Nasser and the rulers of Syria and Saudi Arabia pledged "indestructible unity." If there were any disagreements between them over Nasser's jeopardizing of oil royalties, these were thickly papered over in their joint ire over Israel's slashing attack on a Jordan police fort (see below).

India's Jawaharlal Nehru, for the first time critical of Egypt in the Suez affair ("India would not have followed the same procedure by which Egypt nationalized the canal"), saw hope for negotiations at the U.N. "The gap between the two sides," said he, "is not very big." The consensus was, however, that it will take a lot of time to close that narrow gap.

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