Road to Suez

The first question before the Security Council was: What is Egypt's mood on the Suez question, hard or malleable? Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi, whose ability as a diplomat is best described by the fact that he has held top jobs under both King Farouk and President Nasser, leaned over the horseshoe table and started to talk. First, bald Mahmoud Fawzi recited in his soft voice Egypt's familiar grievances against the French and British. Then he purred: "Foremost in importance [is] a system of cooperation between the Egyptian authority operating the Suez canal and the users of the canal." When the foreign ministers around the table heard that word "cooperation," they had their answer.

In response to this obvious invitation, the U.S.'s John Foster Dulles made the next conciliatory move. "The essence," he said, "if ... we are to seek justice, is that the operation of this international utility shall be insulated from the politics of any nation." By his manner, Fawzi intimated his assent; it was obviously time to head off Security Council action on an Anglo-French proposal to condemn Egypt for its canal seizure and explore what Fawzi meant by "cooperation." Fawzi agreed to meet privately with Britain's Selwyn Lloyd and France's Christian Pineau in U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold's 38th-floor U.N. offices overlooking the East River. "I will be acting merely as a chaperon," Hammarskjold told Dulles. Said Presbyterian Elder Dulles, with a grin: "My understanding of a chaperon is a person whose job is to keep two people apart. Your job is to get the parties together."

"Words, Just Words." For three days, usually with Hammarskjold just listening, the three foreign ministers talked in the skyscraper suite. The Westerners felt that they were getting Fawzi to concede little. "Words, just words," blurted discouraged Christian Pineau on leaving one session. Said another diplomat: "Fawzi is conducting a striptease, but so far he hasn't shown an inch of skin." At night Hammarskjold sat up late sifting comments of the bargainers and reducing them to essentials.

When the ministers met on the fourth day, Hammarskjold laid before them a set of six principles on which a negotiation of the Suez case could proceed. "Gentlemen, what do you think of this?" he asked. For another three hours the ministers talked, quibbled, phrased and rephrased. By late afternoon they had agreed. Then the Security Council was summoned back into full session, and Dag Hammarskjold read out the six principles on which the three foreign ministers had agreed:

1) no discrimination against transit, through the canal;

2) respect for Egypt's sovereignty;

3) insulation of canal operations from the politics of any country;

4) tolls to be decided by agreement between Egypt and the users;

5) allocation of a "fair proportion" of dues for canal developments;

6) arbitration of the sum to be paid the expropriated Suez Canal Company.

The key point seemed to be No. 3--the one Dulles had called "the essence" of a just settlement.

"Most Gratifying." Limited as it was, this represented the first important breakthrough in the Suez affair. The diplomats rushed to capitalize on it, and President Eisenhower told his TV campaign "press conference" that "it looks like a very great crisis is behind us." Lloyd and Pineau had booked plane seats for return home, but they postponed their flights. After talking with Dulles, they withdrew their original anti-Egyptian resolution and prepared a new one.

Its first part endorsed the six principles. But it also called on the council to endorse the 18-nations London conference demand for international control of the canal, a demand that Egypt had rejected often and emphatically, and Russia as well. "A beginning has been made," Lloyd told the council. "The hard problems lie ahead." The hardest problem was right on hand--both Fawzi and Russia's Dmitry Shepilov balked at reviving the point of international control. There was little more to be said, so just before midnight the council came to the vote. Nine delegates voted for all the Anglo-French resolution, but Shepilov, with Yugoslavia's Koca Popovic for company, cast Russia's veto against the section calling for international control. The result: the council endorsed only the "six principles" as the basis for further efforts to find a real solution to the conflicting needs of the Suez Canal's users and its Egyptian confiscators.

The foreign ministers scattered to their capitals. But the issue stayed on the U.N.'s agenda, and Secretary-General Hammarskjold went right to work on arrangements for further negotiations to put real meat on the bare bones of principle. The agreement was too vague to promise solid chance of a settlement, and in Cairo, Gamal Abdel Nasser cast fog on the most important of the six principles by asking: "What does Mr. Dulles mean by 'insulating the canal from politics?' The canal still runs through Egypt." The week's events, however, could be counted a broad step toward conciliation and away from the recent angry moment when governments were mobilizing fleets and armies and threatening war over Suez.

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