Greece: The Symbols of Acceptance

Shrouded under tarpaulin on the docks of the Italian port of Livorno are more than 200 American heavy tanks. They have been sitting there, running up storage bills of $1,000,000 a year, since 1967. The beached tanks had been loaded aboard ships bound for Greece, but they were diverted to Livorno when Greece's Premier George Papadopoulos and his fellow colonels seized power and imposed martial law on the country. Reacting to the storm of international protest over the colonels' refusal to restore civilian rule, Washington suspended the flow of U.S. arms aid to the new Athens government.

Officially the U.S. still views the colonels with mild distaste and exerts gentle pressure on them to return to some semblance of democracy. But the Greek regime now seems certain to get those tanks sooner or later—and probably sooner. A team of U.S. civilian and military advisers headed by G. Warren Nutter, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, flew into Athens last week for two days of talks with Papadopoulos and other officials. Nutter, who is the highest-ranking U.S. emissary to visit Greece since the 1967 soup, was mainly interested in Greece's posture as a member of NATO. Since the U.S. flow of arms aid was slowed down, Greek and American commanders have Become worried about the growing obsoescence of Greece's heavy equipment.

The arms embargo has always been rather meaningless. Though shipment of tanks and certain other big items has remained suspended, the U.S. sold the Greeks a few jet fighters and trainers in 1968 and has maintained the low of trucks and small arms—precisely what the regime needed to keep a tight grip on the country. Pressure on the White House from both Athens md the Pentagon for full resumption of arms aid increased with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. More recently, the Soviets have shipped to Bulgaria several hundred of their latest tanks, which outgun Greece's 15-to 20-year-old American-made M-47 and M48 tanks. The continuing Middle East crisis and he growing Soviet naval presence in he Mediterranean have also influenced Washington toward a full resumption of shipments of heavy arms to Greece.

Nonetheless, if Washington goes ahead and hands over the new tanks to Athens before Papadopoulos sets the late for elections, the U.S. action will be regarded throughout the world as he final act of the American embrace of the dictatorial colonels.