Carter's Envoy

Superambassador with clout

Even before Egypt raised its flag over El Arish, Ambassador-at-Large Robert S. Strauss, 60, was raising his own in Washington. President Carter's special envoy to the Middle East talks on Palestinian autonomy began serving notice that he intends to play a dominant role. "I've got a mandate from the President," he told TIME Correspondent Richard Bernstein. "I consider myself a full partner with him and the Secretary of State." In mid-May, Strauss announced that he would make his first visit to Cairo and Jerusalem in his new role at the end of June, two months earlier than he originally intended. This burst of energy in his new assignment caused some concern in Washington that as a confessed novice in the nuances of Middle Eastern diplomacy, Strauss might complicate U.S. problems in this sensitive region, especially as Palestinian autonomy talks got under way.

Strauss dismisses these fears and further insists that there will be no conflict between him and the Secretary of State.

Says Strauss: "Cy Vance is one of my closest personal friends in the Administration.

He wouldn't do anything of consequence on the Middle East without consulting me, and I wouldn't do anything without consulting him." One ranking State Department official endorses Strauss's view of the relationship: "Both Strauss and Vance are acutely aware of rumors about a clash over influence and will bend over backward to avoid it."

Disarming, if selective candor is a trademark of the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Strauss repeatedly says that he prefers not to deal with the substance of issues but with how to make things work. As a domestic political troubleshooter, he is respected by Democrats for pulling their party together after the McGovern debacle of 1972. That bravura performance has been repeated in his current assignment as special representative for trade negotiations, where his formidable jawboning powers have maintained the momentum of discussions that could break down under the sheer weight of detail. Strauss says candidly of his new job: "This is a different kind of undertaking for me. The reason I've been good in Washington--if I have been good--is that I know all the nuances of this place. I move well around all the pitfalls because I know the terrain. Now I'm moving into an area where I don't know the terrain."

Israeli and Egyptian officials appear happy with Strauss's appointment, if only because they are convinced that he will have Carter's ear. The Egyptians expect the autonomy talks to be long, difficult and tedious; the appointment of a superambassador with political clout is regarded as a sure sign of Washington's commitment to the peace process.

Moreover, Strauss was in Cairo in April with a U.S. trade delegation and apparently impressed President Sadat by telling him that the obfuscation of the Egyptian bureaucracy was an obstacle to U.S. corporate investment in his country.

"I'm a strong, active negotiator," Strauss says. "I'm not a passive negotiator. I'm not a meditative pipe-smoking type who sits and listens and then summarizes at the end. I'm very aggressive.

I'm sometimes wrong, but I negotiate from the front, riot the back." He then adds, in reference to his new job: "I can proclaim myself the world's greatest expert, since nobody has ever done it before."

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