National Affairs: Traveler's Report

Back from the globe's Middle East crossroads, John Foster Dulles got down from an Air Force Constellation at Washington airport one evening last week, the first U.S. Secretary of State ever to have visited the vast, strategic region between the Aegean and the Ganges. Dulles and his party, including Mutual Security Director Harold E. Stassen, had bridged an arduous 20,000 miles in 20 days, listened and talked to the rulers of twelve countries inhabited by nearly half the people of the non-Communist world.

The Secretary's grey suit showed the wear & tear of travel, his blown grey hair needed a trim, his eyes behind the spectacles were bloodshot. But his energy seemed undiminished. Briskly he greeted a small group of friends and-dignitaries, then hurried to a waiting limousine, bound for an immediate report to the White House. Long after his departure, the plane was still unloading exotic items of luggage: rugs, tapestries, brass coffee tables and other gifts from newfound Middle Eastern friends.

This week, in a radio and TV report to the nation, Dulles outlined the background for a more sharply defined U.S. policy in the Middle East. Highlights:

¶ The U.S. supports legitimate Middle East nationalism, but not at the price of disrupting Western unity. "The Western powers can gain, rather than lose, from an orderly development of self-government," said the Secretary. He thought the U.S. could act the role of honest broker in the Middle East, e.g., help find a solution that will reconcile "Egyptian sovereignty and international concern" in the Anglo-Egyptian Suez base dispute.

¶ The U.S. believes that "the day is past" when aspirations of "the peoples of the Near East and Asia can be ignored"; that the U.S. can "usefully help" progress by providing technical assistance under MSA (but "in some cases" Middle East governments should use their own oil royalties to better advantage).

¶ The U.S. "stands fully" behind the U.S.-British-French declaration of 1950, guaranteeing the Arab-Israeli frontiers.

¶ The U.S. wants both Israel and the Arab states to make concessions for peace, and hopes for internationalization of Jerusalem's holy places. Dulles found the Arabs "more fearful of Zionism than of Communism."

¶ The Truman Administration's plan for a Middle East Defense Organization "is a future rather than immediate possibility." Meanwhile the U.S. "can usefully help strengthen the interrelated defenses of those countries which want strength."