MOROCCO: Five-Year Plan

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Almost unnoticed, the U.S. has been negotiating to surrender five of its most important overseas airbases: the Strategic Air Command's "frontline" B-47 fields (and a naval air station) in Morocco. Reason for the deal is twofold: 1) nationalist pressure in newly independent Morocco for withdrawal of all foreign forces, U.S. as well as French and Spanish; 2) U.S. judgment that in the near future the Moroccan bomber fields will have lost their present strategic value.

Legally and politically, the U.S. has found itself in an awkward spot ever since the French granted Morocco independence in 1956. Lacking any agreement with the new nation, the U.S. was forced to rest its case on the lease it had signed with the French government five years before. In fact, France still claims technical ownership of the bases, and the

French flag still flies over the gates. The rising opposition of young Moslem activists in Morocco found the U.S. bases a convenient weapon to use against King Mohammed V's moderate regime. "Aggression and exploitation," cried a Moroccan trade-union weekly. Egged on by extremists, the Moroccan government forbade U.S. ships to land gear, even set up roadblocks near the Atlantic coast in case U.S. ships should try sneak unloading of trailer trucks.

For Moroccans, it was a question of pride. What they wanted most was some evidence that the foreigner acknowledged their new status as a fully sovereign nation no longer an appendage of France. U.S. Ambassador Charles Yost made them an offer: the U.S. would evacuate the $500 million bases after seven years. The Moroccans countered with a request for a three-year phaseout. The expected compromise: U.S. operation of the bases for five more years.