Monday, Nov. 02, 1981

The Private Travels of Nixon

Still something of a statesman outside his own country

To the dismay of some and the delight of a few, Richard Nixon was back in the headlines. Ronald Reagan had asked him to join ex-Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter in the official U.S. delegation to the funeral of Egypt's Anwar Sadat. Then, mysteriously, Nixon had embarked on a private week's tour of Middle Eastern and North African capitals, fueling rumors that he was acting as an unofficial emissary for Reagan. (Not so, say both Nixon and the White House.) Just back from that trip, Nixon talked with TIME's Washington Contributing Editor Hugh Sidey: "This is a Reagan opportunity. The Middle East is crying out for strong leadership. It is not enough for the United States to be a broker."

The world's unique and ubiquitous elder statesman without portfolio was talking, back in his Manhattan office, still tinged with jet lag from his visits to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco. ("It is better for the U.S. to be the friend of Israel's enemies than for the Russians to be.") He has not reported formally to Reagan. He will not. "No written report or anything like that," he says with a wave of his hand. "Nor am I going to take two hours talking to the President. That used to bore the dickens out of me."

There is no written record of the more than ten hours of serious discussion Nixon had with half a dozen Arab leaders. "It was an old friend talking," he explains. "Sometimes those leaders don't talk candidly with an ambassador. I did what I always do: at night I made careful notes."

His findings will filter out, in phone calls to Reagan and Secretary of State Alexander Haig, in his own writing and speeches. The trip was his; his idea, his arrangements. The flap about who knew, or didn't know, where he was going and what he was doing is ridiculous, meaningless. Nixon brushes by the subject as he focuses on a larger problem.

"We've heard it for years: 'Don't let the cradle of civilization be its grave.' Well, now the threat is true. A Middle East war could never be contained." The moderate Arabs to whom Nixon talked liked Egypt's new President, Hosni Mubarak, better than Sadat, Nixon found. But it is vital, he argues, that the U.S. should push ahead with the Camp David peace plan, that the Palestine Liberation Organization must recognize Israel's right to exist ("That can happen") and that this country "not allow a vacuum to be left on the Palestinian issue."

"The U.S. is the only nation with influence on Israel," Nixon says. "That must be exerted in Israel's best interest. This hard line, that they've won four wars and they will win the next one, is long-term disaster, eventually suicide."

Palestinian autonomy must always be at the center of the U.S.'s Middle East peace effort, Nixon says. What about direct talks with the P.L.O.? Nixon shakes his head. "Not the Andy Young route," he says, referring to the former U.N. Ambassador who was caught out holding unofficial talks with P.L.O. representatives. Maybe we could talk to the P.L.O. leader Yasser Arafat by proxy. "The Soviets use proxies," continues Nixon. "We should not object to our friends doing something: the Saudis, the Jordanians. We should not object to our friends in Europe talking to the P.L.O. It is going to happen."

Nixon is taken by a memory of France's Charles de Gaulle: "Back in 1967 he told me that the U.S. should talk to China when they needed us. Israel should negotiate when they are strong, when they have the U.S."

Nixon supports the sale of AWACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia. If this week's vote in the Senate goes against Reagan, he says, the Saudis are not going to quit selling us oil. But they are going to be cool. "The moderate Arab nations are watching. They will be hurt too. They are looking to the U.S. to provide mutual defense."

Israel's American supporters are upset with Nixon. The No. 1 Israeli appears not to be. When Nixon was at the Sadat funeral he was talking to a small group when he noted Menachem Begin waving at him. Nixon went to Begin's side. "Mr. President," said the Prime Minister, "every time I make a speech I say we owe our thanks to three Presidents. Truman for recognition, Nixon for help in the 1973 war and Carter for Camp David." Nixon smiles at the memory. "You know," he says, "I don't think Begin is that intractable. Tough, yes, but not hopeless."

The Arab leaders want Reagan to meet with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. Nixon agrees. "It is important that the two get to know each other. There ought to be an annual summit meeting to avoid miscalculation. It is a restraining influence on both of them."

Nixon is concerned about the relationship between America's economic condition and Reagan's ability to conduct foreign policy. He doubts that Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd would have opposed the AWACS sale if the economy had been responding to Reagan's program. "Politics rears its ugly head when the economy goes down," warns Nixon. "Bad times ahead. Bad unemployment numbers, predictions of doom. It is going to take a cold winter to have a good spring, when we can move up again smartly. Reagan has set the right directions. Now is the time that he must stay, as former House Minority Whip Les Arends used to say, 'steady in the buggy.' "

If Reagan does not have success with the American economy, Nixon declares, "the U.S. has had it as an economic power. Reagan must succeed or we will have a country bloated by inflation, a Government that gets bigger, people who get less productive. We need the military balance rectified so we can compete economically.

Our economy is the best thing going for us in the world. We can beat the hell out of the Soviets. Economically they are dead.

But we can lose to the Japanese, the French, the Germans."

Indeed, casting an eye toward the Cancun conference where Reagan was even then propounding a formula for free world economic planning, Nixon was enthusiastic. "I'd do more economically.

That is the final answer. We need to better mobilize the economic strength of the non-Communist world." -

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