Jets for Tito

One of the double dares that Bill Knowland likes to fling at Dwight Eisenhower concerns U.S. aid programs to Communist Yugoslavia--foreign aid which, the Senate Republican leader is convinced, "just does not make sense." Last week Ike quietly stepped across Knowland's line: he ordered shipments of military aid to Belgrade, suspended for almost a year, to start up again.

Last summer Congress was convinced that the Yugoslavs, despite massive injections of U.S. aid ($1 billion since 1949), were cozying up to the Kremlin. Under Knowland's prodding a rider to the Mutual Security Appropriation Act banned any new military assistance to Marshal Tito in fiscal 1957 except for maintenance and spare parts. Congress also stipulated that the Administration cut off all aid authorized in previous years and still "in the pipeline," e.g., some $100 million in military hardware, including some 300 Sabre-jet fighter-bombers. The cutoff could be waived if two conditions were met: i) that the President, within 90 days after the bill's passage, certify to Congress that Yugoslavia was still independent of the Kremlin and intended to remain so, and 2) that continued U.S. aid be in the national interest.

Ike made his decision in two stages. Last October, in assuring Congress that "the balance of the available evidence leads me to find that Yugoslavia remains independent," he authorized the Government to continue economic aid but ordered the heavy military equipment to be withheld "until the situation can be more accurately appraised." The reappraisal was completed last week. The events of last winter, announced the State Department, have confirmed the President's finding of Yugoslav independence. Among the events: the Russian intervention in Hungary that brought the Moscow-Belgrade honeymoon to an end and has been followed by "renewed Soviet harassment of Yugoslavia." Result: the U.S., with Ike's approval, will send its shipments of heavy equipment to help Tito defend himself--but deliveries will be made on a "more modest" scale than originally planned; e.g., only 75-80 of the promised jets will be released this year.

From Knowland & Co. came the expected yelp of protest. Blared Knowland's sidekick, New Hampshire's Styles Bridges: "A great mistake." Since the funds have already been appropriated, however, there seemed nothing they could do to stop the shipments. Then, at week's end, came a new obstacle to resumed U.S. military assistance. Huffed Belgrade, apparently with one eye on Moscow: it would need time to "reconsider" the question of U.S. heavy-weapons deliveries. The "reconsideration." the State Department believed. would not take long.

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