Carter's Mideast Muddle

A tribute to Young gives the U.S. a U.N. victory--for now

"It doesn't make a damn bit of difference where the President is, the White House or the banks of the Mississippi," Press Secretary Jody Powell snapped last week. But there was no way of avoiding the contrasting images. On the Mississippi, Jimmy Carter drifted downstream in an imitation 19th century steamboat, waving, dancing and playing a calliope, stepping ashore periodically to shake hands, dandle babies and try to sell his energy program. Back east his top foreign policy aides were engaged in public disputes over who was in charge of U.S. policy in the Middle East and over what that policy should be. The disputes set off dangerous waves. Leaders of black and Jewish organizations, still at odds over the resignation of Andrew Young as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., held a series of meetings that ended in mutual recriminations.

Who is in charge? shipbound reporters asked Carter. "Ask the Vice President," Carter flippantly replied. The next day Carter pointedly corrected himself and said that the man in charge was "the President." But he added that the disarray in his Administration was "no serious thing," merely "little transient squabbles."

The immediate problem confronting Washington was an Arab move, first made in June, to get the U.N. Security Council to endorse the Palestinians' right to self-determination. The Israelis saw this as a deadly threat to their security and demanded that the U.S. honor its pledge to veto any such action. In trying, successfully as it turned out, to get a July Security Council meeting postponed for a month, Young had met with the U.N. representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel had protested that this violated a U.S. commitment not to negotiate with or recognize the P.L.O. unless that organization recognized the right of Israel to exist as a state or at least accepted U.N. Resolution 242, which implicitly affirms this right. Because of the resulting uproar over his meeting with the P.L.O. and over the misleading account of it that he gave the State Department, Young had to resign.

In the meantime, the Security Council meeting on the Palestinians had been rescheduled for last week. To avert a showdown there, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski had devised a plan to offer the U.N. a more moderate U.S. resolution that would speak of the Palestinians' human rights but not their right to an independent state. They sent Special Envoy Robert Strauss flying off to the Middle East, under strict, sealed instructions signed by Carter, to explain this plan to Israel's Premier Menachem Begin and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat. Finding them both strongly opposed, Strauss then flew home and convinced Vance and Brzezinski that the U.S. should abandon the resolution.

The stage was thus set for last week's Security Council battle between the U.S. and the nations backing a Palestinian resolution. As Thursday approached, the day set for the rescheduled meeting, tension mounted. Young, who is staying at his U.N. post until a successor is named, was still trying to postpone the debate another time. Though fundamentally unsympathetic to the U.S. position, he followed orders and spent hours pleading with Security Council members for a delay.

A resolution meanwhile had been drafted by a General Assembly committee dealing with the Palestinian issue. Describing "the question of Palestine" as a "core of the conflict in the Middle East," the proposal called for the Palestinian people to acquire "self-determination, national independence and sovereignty in Palestine."

The draft also cited Resolution 242, thus affirming Israel's right to exist. It carefully avoided specifically calling for a Palestinian state and did not endorse the P.L.O. as the representative of the Palestinian people. Still, the rights demanded for the Palestinians--self-determination, independence and sovereignty--would just about add up to a state. So if the matter were to come to a vote, the U.S. would have no choice but to cast its 22nd Security Council veto.

When the Security Council convened Thursday afternoon, ironically it was Young who gaveled the meeting to order; he is that body's president for August. The debate's first day produced no surprises. Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Blum argued that the Camp David accords already took account of Palestinian rights. In effect, this was seconded by Egyptian Ambassador Esmet Abdel Meguid, who praised the Arab resolution but added that Israel "has committed itself to resolving the Palestinian problem in all its aspects." But the P.L.O. observer at the U.N., Zehdi Labib Terzi, vehemently rejected this, charging that "Palestinians were still denied the right to return home and choose their own representatives."

On Friday, Kuwaiti Ambassador Abdalla Yaccoub Bishara hinted darkly at the potential link between Arab oil exports and U.S. policy by saying, "We don't want to bring the oil pressure." But the showdown never came. The pro-Palestinian states had decided to postpone a formal vote out of respect for Young. Said Bishara: "We can't imagine Young being blemished by [having to cast] a veto."

The American envoy was visibly moved by this tribute and was prompted once again to speak out bluntly. Said Young: "I have a fundamental disagreement with policy . . . It is a ridiculous policy not to talk to the P.L.O. And it is also ridiculous for any of you around the table not to have good relations with Israel." In what could turn out to be his valedictory to the council, he then said: "I feel like an innocent bystander swept by the powerful current of history--and I go gladly." The applause was tremendous.

Had the U.S. been forced to veto the draft, there almost certainly would have been outraged reactions not only from the P.L.O., but from key moderate Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. To avoid such an outcry, and the adverse impact it could have on the U.S. role as a broker in the general peace process, was the reason Washington originally had wanted to sponsor its compromise resolution. It might head off a stronger Arab resolution and also be viewed as a positive gesture by Arab states. It was thus hoped that both Israel and the Palestinians would accept a formula that would have built upon or expanded 242 by somehow affirming Palestinian rights.

Mobilizing support for a compromise had been the main goal of Strauss's Middle East trip, Aug. 16 to Aug. 20, but he had found none. The Israelis now regard 242 as sacrosanct, and they rejected any plan to tamper with or modify it.

Egypt was almost equally adamant. When Strauss presented the proposal to Sadat, the Egyptian President called the plan "stupid." Sadat wanted nothing to slow the Camp David timetable calling for Egypt in January to regain two-thirds of the Sinai, including valuable oilfields. He feared that a U.S. proposal on the Palestinians would so outrage the Israelis that they might find some pretext to delay in fulfilling their Camp David conditions or to walk out of the current autonomy talks aimed at granting some self-rule to West Bank and Gaza Palestinians.

Despite the Israeli hostility, the Palestinian question is not going to disappear. A number of Arab states are planning to place the issue on the agenda of the conference of nonaligned nations that meets in Havana in early September. What remains a question is the attitude of Saudi Arabia. When the Saudis increased their daily oil production in early July by 1 million bbl., there were hints that they would do so for three to six months. How long this higher output will be sustained could depend on how the Saudis rate U.S. Middle East policy, especially the stand on the Palestinians.

The major beneficiary of the Young flap seems to be the P.L.O. As American black organizations have rallied to Young, they have been speaking out on the issue that led to his resignation. As a result, the plight of the Palestinians and the cause advocated by the P.L.O. have been receiving more favorable attention in the U.S. than at any time in memory. Most active has been the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which sent to New York a delegation headed by its president, the Rev. Joseph Lowery. Meeting with Terzi and other P.L.O. representatives, it conveyed its unconditional support for the "human rights of all Palestinians, including the right of self-determination in regard to their homeland." Although the S.C.L.C. urged "consideration to the recognition of the nationhood of Israel" and stopped short of endorsing a separate Palestinian state, Terzi was delighted with the meeting.

The following day the black group called on Israeli Ambassador Blum and told him that it made "no apologies for our support of Palestinian human rights, just as we make no apologies to the P.L.O. for our continued support of the state of Israel." Replied Blum: "It's ridiculous to equate us with the P.L.O. It's like equating criminals to a police force."

With the blacks' interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict heightened and the sympathies of their leaders beginning to tilt toward the Palestinians, a potentially powerful political force could emerge as a new domestic factor in U.S. policymaking for the Middle East. In the weeks ahead, however, Washington's course seems reasonably clear. The Administration is likely to await the outcome of the three-day summit between Begin and Sadat, scheduled to begin in Haifa the first week in September. A few days later Bob Strauss will return to the region to try to quicken the pace of the Camp David process.

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