MIDDLE EAST: A Touch of Gloom, a Hint of Peace

Until last week, Henry Kissinger had insisted that he would not undertake a trip to the Middle East unless he had a reasonably good chance of bringing back a firm agreement. But as the U.S. Secretary of State prepared for another round of his shuttle diplomacy —with visits to Jerusalem, Cairo, Amman, Damascus and Riyadh beginning next week—he changed the rules. He was off on no more than "an exploratory trip" at the request of Egypt and Israel, Kissinger said, and then only because of "the urgency of the situation." Kissinger's hedging—he was not going "to settle anything," he emphasized —considerably dampened earlier optimism that a second-stage agreement on Sinai was easily attainable.

Soviet Role. The Israelis and Arabs tried quickly to knock down dangerous conjectures about trouble ahead. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who wound up his first official call on France's President Valery Giscard d'Estaing with a sizable order for French armaments, insisted that "for the first time in 26 years, peace is possible." Israel's leaders reaffirmed their intention of ceding large chunks of Sinai in return for guarantees of nonaggression.

The Soviets will send Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko to Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad before Kissinger's visit. These are the three Arab capitals that Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev was to visit before he pleaded illness (TIME, Jan. 13). The Soviets are uncomfortably aware that, with French arms and Saudi Arabian subsidies, Sadat is now less dependent on Moscow. As a result, diplomats speculate that Gromyko might ease up on previous Russian demands that talks be shifted to Geneva.

Such a change would be a vindication of Sadat's political strategy. Egypt's President has been roundly criticized by left-wing Arabs for accepting aid from Saudi Arabia's conservative King Faisal (see box page 26). Last fall he was heavily pressured by army officers to make enough concessions to unblock the flow of Soviet arms. The army's concern was clear: since the October 1973 war, Egypt had received only two shipments of Soviet spare parts. Brezhnev's visit was considered a propitious omen; when he canceled out, the pressure on Sadat resumed.

Sadat's agreement with France for up to 50 new Mirage F1s, along with AMX-30 tanks, Crotale surface-to-air missiles, French radar systems and $116 million in credits, will ease that pressure. Meanwhile, with help from Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing Arab states, Sadat is shifting from MIGs to Mirages in his air force and replacing most of the 120 planes that Egypt lost in the 1973 war. Sadat's success in securing arms has confounded his critics and eased pressures considerably.