Straight Talk Among "Friends"

For once, as they gathered last week to inaugurate the United Nations General Assembly's 29th session, the delegates had little difficulty sorting out and settling on priorities. In his annual report, Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim described the world's economic situation as "a global crisis of extraordinary dimensions." Incoming General Assembly President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria said that "the problems of development are spreading beyond national and continental limits." President Gerald Ford, appearing to deliver "the first of my addresses to the representatives of the world," agreed that "the economy of the world is under unprecedented stress."

Uncommonly Blunt. In his first formal venture into international diplomacy, Ford offered the delegates the same thing he had given the American people in his Inaugural Address, "a little straight talk among friends." The delegates who heard him agreed afterward that the President had been uncommonly blunt. "Developing and developed countries, market and nonmarket economies--we are all part of one interdependent economic system," he said. Ford went on to imply that some countries--namely the oil-producing nations --appeared to be acting less interdependently than they had a right to.

The President linked two pressing world supply crises, oil and food. Problems in either could "be resolved on the basis of cooperation--or can, I should say, be made unmanageable on the basis of confrontation." Ford deplored the use of oil as a political weapon, as Arab countries had employed it last year. "To use one commodity for political purposes," he cautioned, "will inevitably tempt other countries to use their commodities for their own purposes."

Ford pointed out that the U.S. is the world's leading food producer. "It has not," he said, "been our policy to use food as a political weapon despite the oil embargo and recent oil price and production decisions." Any implicit threat in that statement was softened by Ford's announcement that, despite inflated prices, the U.S. would increase food aid to developing nations. He did not, however, specify the amount of such aid. Almost as he spoke, Treasury Secretary William E. Simon was warning Congress that because of the impact of high oil prices, "we may be forced to reassess certain aspects of our policy as well as develop new policies that will increase our leverage."

Actually, the U.S. has relatively limited economic clout against the oil-producing nations, as Ford well knows. The oil countries depend on the U.S. for wheat, corn and tobacco generally, but they could get these from alternate sources. They do buy American petroleum-industry equipment, but for the U.S. to embargo such exports would be self-defeating. If the U.S. held back on sales of armaments or commercial aircraft, two major export items, the Arabs could easily find substitutes elsewhere, albeit of lower quality in many cases. The most compelling U.S. argument is actually an appeal to Arab self-interest: a worldwide depression caused by unstable energy prices could hurt oil producers as much as oil customers.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was set to re-emphasize the point this week to the General Assembly. He will also suggest some of the political implications of a continuing energy crisis. Here U.S. leverage is a little stronger. One immediate tactic might be a slackening of American pressure on Israel to negotiate the return of occupied Arab territories. But there is an obviously remote long-range threat that some Arab nations have always taken seriously: U.S. occupation of their oilfields.

Majority Rule. President Ford's plain talk referred to another international complication that increasingly vexes Washington: in an expanding United Nations, the U.S. and Western Europe are more and more outvoted on key issues by blocs of small Third World countries. The President reviewed a lesson that he had learned during a quarter-century in Congress: "We who believe in and live by majority rule must always be alert to the danger of 'tyranny of the majority.'"

Ford's hard-edged speech proved to be an appropriate thematic counterpoint to the opening address of General Assembly President Bouteflika. At 37, the Algerian Foreign Minister not only is the youngest person ever to occupy the seat but also appears to be among the least neutral in his sympathies. Bouteflika's opening address scored imperialism in Southeast Asia, an obvious reference to the U.S. presence there. He attacked "hidden hands" on Cyprus. He congratulated Portugal, regularly scored in the past by U.N. members as a colonial oppressor, for "reconciliation with the cause of liberty" in granting independence to Guinea-Bissau, and suggested that other Western powers might profit by Lisbon's example. Introducing Bouteflika to Ford later, Secretary of State Kissinger jokingly told the President, "I have never known him to be impartial."

Not all the concern, and the confrontations for the next three months of the Assembly's meetings, will be economic. The U.N.'s 25-nation steering committee last week approved a 110-item agenda. Among the more contentious issues:

> North Korea, although not a member, is seeking the removal of foreign forces stationed in South Korea under the U.N. flag, i.e., U.S. troops. The demand is backed by China and the Soviet Union.

> Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk seeks U.N. support in recovering control of his country from the U.S.-backed government of Marshal Lon Nol. Washington opposes the move.

> Cyprus is asking U.N. aid to resolve its rending crisis, which will inevitably provoke a diplomatic imbroglio between Greece and Turkey.

The most combustible item on the agenda, however, is "the Palestinian question." It was put there by a group of Arab and nonaligned nations that intend to debate the case of Palestinian Arabs not as refugees, as the U.N. has always considered them, but as a dispossessed nation. In effect, this would provide a status they have never achieved in 26 years of Middle East turmoil.

Broader Issue. The sides are squaring off for a bitter debate. Palestinian representatives are already on hand; since they have no standing, they are attached to other Arab delegations. Israeli Ambassador Josef Tekoah contends that when the General Assembly debates Palestine, "the scourge of barbaric bloodshed that has plagued mankind in recent years would find itself gaining the approval of the U.N."

The fact is that Israel, by stressing the problem of the terrorists, has never really faced up to the broader Palestinian issue. Nonetheless, Tekoah's fears are understandable: no nation has suffered as much as Israel from the development of a Third World hegemony in the General Assembly and the bloc of Communist and developing nations that it has created. Yet even if the U.N. were to formally endorse the Palestinian position, this would not basically alter the situation. The real answer to the Palestine question will be found not in marble halls alongside the East River but in the kind of face-to-face negotiations that Kissinger has been pursuing in the wake of the last Middle East war a year ago. Polemics may be the privilege of a majority. It is rarely a panacea.

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