When Halfway Is Not Enough

At a dinner given for the two leaders midway through their summit meeting in Iceland last week, Richard Nixon hoisted a glass to Georges Pompidou and offered the French President both a gracious toast and a telling reminder.

"I came a little more than halfway for this meeting," Nixon said. "Your trip was four hours, mine was 5 1/2 hours. Whether I came more than halfway in these discussions remains to be seen."

By the end of the leaders' seven hours of talks in Reykjavik, it seemed fairly clear that the U.S. President had indeed gone somewhat more than halfway--and that he might have to go much further if the "Year of Europe" is to materialize. The Iceland talks were not a failure, but neither did they produce the kind of meeting of minds needed if Nixon is to achieve a grand European summit this fall.

Pompidou looked sickly and tired as he emerged--all bundled up in hat, scarf and heavy overcoat--from his DC-8 at Keflavik Airport. His face was puffed up as a result of his taking a cortisone preparation, which stirred new speculation that the illness that has been dogging him for several months may be more serious than arthritis. Nixon, displaying a deep Bahamas tan, seemed visibly relieved to have a chance to escape from Watergate headlines.

On his first evening in Reykjavik, he wandered out with a single Icelandic escort and walked around chatting amiably with other strollers. The local press did not make much of his one bad gaffe. Speaking with reporters on the plane while flying from Washington to Iceland, Nixon had referred to the island nation as "you'll pardon the expression, a Godforsaken place."

As Henry Kissinger had outlined U.S. hopes in a briefing before the meeting, the idea was to begin defining "where we want the Atlantic relationship to go, in its deepest sense, over a ten-year period or a five-year period."

Iceland was to yield the top-level "political decisions" that would provide the U.S. with a framework for the forthcoming technical negotiations on trade, troops and monetary reform.

Pompidou brought with him a different strategy. It reflected his suspicion (shared, to a lesser degree, in London and Bonn) that Washington's real purpose is considerably less cosmic: to use the threat of a unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces in Europe, and of continued delays in the already overdue reform of the monetary system, to bludgeon the Europeans into making concessions on trade and balance of payments matters. Nixon has stressed that he has no intention of pulling out troops; but he does contend that the Common Market should reduce its tariffs and other barriers to U.S. products.

More Gaullist. The French response is that the Market's purchases of U.S. farm products have risen 42% since 1966. Further, the French hold that before any deal is made on trade, a new world monetary system must be hammered out. Nixon disagrees, figuring that the current monetary upheaval --with the continuing weakness of the dollar--is a symptom and not the cause of the trade imbalance.

Pompidou emphasized the "extreme importance" of the U.S. military presence in Europe, as well as his own interest in early progress on monetary reform. Pompidou could claim at least one potentially significant victory. The U.S. had been toying with the notion of creating a new forum for the forthcoming negotiations on trade and currency reform. Pompidou, wary of U.S. efforts to "link" the various negotiations for bargaining advantage, insisted successfully that the negotiations be handled through existing institutions.

Pompidou yielded little ground in return. True, the French position on the Atlantic summit--which Nixon wants --softened a bit from one of "nothing doing" to "we'll see," as one Elysee spokesman put it last week. The next round of talks begins with a meeting between Kissinger and Pompidou's brusque new Foreign Minister Michel Jobert in Paris this week.

As the two Presidents parted, Pompidou told newsmen: "I allowed myself a plaisanterie. I said [to Nixon] that this meeting had been more like conception than delivery. Fortunately, conception is usually more pleasant than delivery."

Nixon responded with some banter of his own. "I sense that I am becoming more and more Gaullist," he told Pompidou. "It is said that I am becoming less and less so," Pompidou replied. Nixon retorted: "It doesn't show."

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