YUGOSLAVIA: Playing Both Sides

Although Communist Tito generally acts like a well-compensated character, he has one deeply frustrated ambition: he wants to build fighting airplanes.

To prove that it is possible, he had his air experts put together a jet fighter with parts cribbed from all over Europe. Tito then asked Britain, France, Italy and the U.S. for rights to produce aircraft under licence. But Yugoslavia is a peasant country and lacks the skilled labor to make jet planes. Since the U.S. economic aid program is designed to provide Yugoslavia with a well-balanced and well-timed economic expansion, the U.S. politely refused Tito's request. It also continued to shower down on Tito F-84 jet fighters, T-33 jet trainers, reconnaissance and transport planes, guns, tanks, jeeps and patrol vessels, to the tune of at least half a billion dollars. The U.S. also chipped in another half-billion dollars for Yugoslavia's economic needs, and made it possible for Tito to borrow $113 million from international banks.

Because Tito had quarreled and split with Stalin largely on account of Russian interference in Yugoslav army affairs, the U.S. did not press the right that it reserves, under all military assistance treaties, to examine the use to which its military aid is put. But now that the time has come to repair or replace some of the hardware, the U.S. Military Assistance Section in Belgrade (about 40 officers and men) asked to take a look at the Yugoslav troops and installations to measure replacement needs. The Yugoslavs stonily refused.

Last week in a speech at Karlovac, Tito made his attitude truculently clear. Said he: "They [the Americans] would like to inspect everything . . . We will not permit this by any means, and it is their business whether or not they will give us armaments. They can also stop them if they want to." At the same time a story was noised about Belgrade that six high Yugoslav air force officers, on their way to Moscow to attend a Soviet air force celebration, would negotiate with Russia for the right to manufacture MIG aircraft in Yugoslavia.

Conclusion: two months after Khrushchev's visit to Belgrade on the slivovitz friendship circuit, Communist Tito is ready to play off onetime enemies against oldtime friends—for a jet of his own.