Uninvited Guests

Uninvited guests are often pests--especially when they drop by with the announced purpose of telling the host how to run the household. Thus President Kennedy last week made little effort to conceal his private irritation at a visit to Washington from Indonesia's showboating President Sukarno and Mali's towering (6 ft. 8 in.) President Modibo Keita, who had come, as representatives of neutralist nations, to urge the U.S. against taking any stands that might lead to war.

Despite his impatience, Kennedy played his public role of host with scrupulous attention to protocol. At Andrews Air Force Base, a starched, trim five-service honor guard and an Air Force band stood by when Kennedy helicoptered in to await Sukarno's chartered jet. But there was no ceremonial motorcade and no elaborate state dinner.

Since the visit was not official, neither guest was offered lodging at Blair House; Sukarno paid for the best suite at the Mayflower Hotel, and Keita stayed at the Mali embassy. At the airport, Kennedy seemed grim as he shook hands with the visitors, gave a bland speech of welcome that pointed up his own concern for peace. Wearing his customary sunglasses, pitji (pillbox hat) and rows of ribbons, fun-loving President Sukarno--who, during the recent Belgrade conference of neutralists, had spent many of his off-duty hours cavorting in a nightclub called the Snakepit--answered that he hoped their talks would "bear fruit."

Peace, Above All. Back at his White House office, Kennedy pointed his guests to couches, settled down in his rocking chair. The talk, which lasted nearly an hour, was all about Berlin. The President warned that the U.S. could not go to a summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev unless the Soviet Union guaranteed the Allied right of access to West Berlin. Bluntly, he told his guests of his disappointment because the Belgrade conference had been harsher in judgment on the U.S. than on the Soviet Union. In answer, Sukarno said that the neutrals were interested in their own economic problems, and were not concerned about the rights and wrongs of Berlin. What they wanted, above all, was peace.

Keita, who wound up making a favorable impression on the President, urged Kennedy to work for peace, but told him not to be overly concerned about the opinions of the neutrals. Said he: "There aren't ten people in my country who know where Berlin is."

Next morning, Kennedy saw Sukarno and Keita separately. First to arrive was Keita, who wore, instead of his arrival-day blue suit, a multicolored, hand-woven robe called a boubou. Keita talked of his country's need for economic assistance,* warned Kennedy that in the new African states, friendship goes to the big powers that provide the most help.

A Cheerful Pat. The meetings ended somewhat more warmly than they began. At luncheon in the White House private dining room, Kennedy toasted his visitors with the vow that the U.S. "will under take any journey and meet with any group that promises to advance peace and the legitimate aspirations of people everywhere." When Sukarno left the White House for the last time--bearing a promise of a Kennedy visit to Indonesia some day--the President gave him a cheerful pat on the back. And in a succession of public statements later, Neutralist Keita heartened the White House by approving Kennedy's go-slow approach to negotiations over Berlin.

-Mali got $2,500,000 from the U.S. and $7,000,000 from France last year, has a promise of $44 million in long-term aid from the Soviet Union.

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