A Voting Fiasco at the U.N.

Mixed signals, or a stunning change of mind

"I now put to the vote the draft resolution contained in document S/13827," said Donald Mills, the slim, elegant Ambassador from Jamaica who was serving as the United Nations Security Council president. After the members raised their hands, he announced the result: "Fifteen votes in favor, none against, no abstentions." U.S. Ambassador Donald McHenry then proudly addressed the meeting. "My delegation is pleased," he said, "that the council has spoken unanimously on this important issue." The occasion was indeed historic. For the first time, the U.S. had supported a Security Council resolution sharply criticizing Israel.

Or had it? Two days later, President Carter issued an astounding statement. The U.S. vote in favor of the resolution, which demanded that Israel both stop its practice of placing new settlements in the Arab lands it has occupied since 1967 and dismantle nearly 100 already in existence, had been a mistake. Carter blamed the error on a "failure to communicate ... clearly." Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, poker-faced, said curtly: "I take full responsibility for what happened."

But what had happened? How could the skilled diplomatic bureaucracy of a superpower mull over a highly sensitive document for nearly a month, scrutinizing each word, and then cast its vote in error? Because of a communications gap between Washington and its U.N. Ambassador in New York? Or between the President and his Secretary of State? Carter's explanation was not only lame but incredible. With one swift stroke, he had destroyed the growing notion, so carefully cultivated in this election year, of acting calmly and shrewdly on foreign policy matters.

Seldom in recent years has the U.S. been subjected to so much scorn and ridicule. In Israel, the Knesset formally rejected the U.N. resolution, which Premier Menachem Begin described as "repugnant and unjustified." American Jewish publications, reflecting Israeli opinion, were unimpressed by Carter's disavowal. Brooklyn's Jewish Press charged that Carter had sold out Israel for oil and described his action as a "stab in the back" to all of its readers. Reporting Carter's reversal, Saudi Arabia's state-controlled radio said acidly: "May God have mercy on his soul." The Kuwait daily Al-Anba called the President "a coward and a puppet in the hands of Israel." "Instant amateurism," snapped a British diplomat. A German colleague described the "incredible flip-flopping" as "intolerable."

Idaho Democrat Frank Church, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, launched an investigation to get at the facts of the sorry episode. As TIME correspondents dug into those facts last week, two things seemed clear: 1) Carter and Vance had failed to agree precisely on just what phrasing the U.S. would or would not accept in the resolution, and 2) annoyed by Israel's seeming violation of the spirit of the Camp David peace agreement, Carter almost surely would have let the U.S. vote stand had he not been in the midst of a race for reelection. He feared, with good reason, the political repercussions among Jewish voters in such important primary-election states as New York, Florida, Illinois and California.

Here, as pieced together by TIME correspondents, is how the fiasco unfolded:

Both Carter and Vance have repeatedly criticized Israel's policy of expanding its settlements on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As Washington sees it, the new settlements undercut the efforts of Special Middle East Envoy Sol Linowitz to get a meaningful agreement between Egypt and Israel on autonomy for the Palestinian inhabitants of these occupied areas. When the Israeli Cabinet on Feb. 10 approved in principle the right of Jews to settle even in the Arab-populated West Bank town of Hebron, Carter felt that Israel had gone too far. Both at the White House and at the State Department, there was a strong desire to lean hard on Israel. A Security Council resolution condemning the settlements, sponsored by Tunisia and Morocco, seemed a proper means of stepping up U.S. pressure.

By Thursday, Feb. 28, the 14 other members of the Security Council had reached agreement on a revised draft of the resolution. Ambassador McHenry sent a copy of this text to Vance on Thursday night, urging him to seek the President's approval of a yes vote by the U.S. Vance took the draft with him next morning to Carter's weekly breakfast with his top foreign policy advisers.

The President had three reservations. First, he directed Vance to tell McHenry to abstain unless the council deleted an offensive paragraph calling on Israel to guarantee religious freedom in Jerusalem--falsely implying that Israel was not now doing so. Second, Carter said that the U.S. could accept the most controversial paragraph, demanding the dismantling of all Israeli settlements, but only if McHenry expressed U.S. reservations about the wording after the vote. To many diplomats, that seemed an odd, unprofessional way of trying to soften a U.S. stand.

But confusion surrounded Carter's third reservation. He told Vance that "all" references to Jerusalem must be excised from the text before the U.S. could approve it. Yet Carter did not emphasize that he literally meant every reference to Jerusalem. According to Vance's aides, the Secretary thought Carter was adamant only about removing what they termed "the obnoxious paragraph" on religious freedom in Jerusalem.

Voting on the resolution was scheduled for Friday night. There was no lack of clarity in Vance's postbreakfast instructions to McHenry: the U.S. would abstain unless McHenry got the offensive paragraph removed, and he must later make the oral reservation about the dismantling demand. Vance did not tell McHenry that every reference to Jerusalem had to go.

By Friday afternoon, McHenry had persuaded other members of the Security Council to delete the paragraph on religious freedom. In telephone talks with Vance, McHenry was advised to seek a postponement of the vote until Saturday, which would provide more time to get Carter's approval of an affirmative U.S. stand. McHenry got the delay.

On Saturday morning, Vance telephoned Carter, who was spending the weekend at Camp David. Surprisingly, the President had not brought a copy of the important document with him. And for the second time the nation's two top foreign policy officials failed to understand each other. Vance told Carter that "all" references to Jerusalem had been removed, even though the Secretary knew that was not literally true. The President did not ask that the final wording be read to him. He told Vance to pass the word to McHenry: the U.S. could vote yes.

After McHenry raised his hand on Saturday afternoon, he delivered his objection to the dismantling provision as directed, calling it "impractical." His colleagues in the State Department were elated at the U.S. vote. One diplomat telephoned a Washington friend: "We finally came out of the closet on this one. Carter's got guts--he's putting the pressure on the Israelis."

Understandably, the Israelis and their U.S. friends were shocked. Vice President Walter Mondale and Robert Strauss, Carter's campaign chief, were barraged with protests from American Jewish leaders over the weekend. Early Monday morning, Israeli Ambassador Ephraim Evron hurried to the White House to complain personally.

From Europe, Ambassador Linowitz tried to influence the erratic decision making in Washington. Before the vote on the resolution, he protested to the State Department that U.S. support would greatly hinder his negotiating task. But Vance never carried Linowitz's objections to the President. After the vote, Linowitz reached Mondale with his complaints, and they may have helped push Carter toward his decision to back off from the U.S. position.

The President helicoptered onto the White House grounds from Camp David on Monday at 11 a.m. For the first time, he read the resolution--and he was stunned by the several references to Jerusalem, which virtually leap off the page. "He was very, very angry," an aide explained later. "Not only that, he was just incredulous that his orders could have been disobeyed." Most of his anger focused on Vance. "I've never seen him so mad," said an Administration official. "He was ready to kill Vance." The view at first of some in the White House was that Vance and McHenry had acted on their own. Said the official: "Carter ought to fire them both." When Presidential Candidate Ted Kennedy criticized the U.S. for supporting the resolution, calling it "shameful," Carter exploded again.

Vance was in Chicago on a speaking engagement. After conferring with Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who argued that Carter should ignore Israel's objections, the irate President finally reached Vance at an airport hangar in Chicago. Carter bluntly told Vance that an error had been made. Vance told the President immediately that he took full responsibility for what had happened. While Vance was en route back to Washington, he received a call from Mondale, asking him to come directly to the White House on his arrival. There Vance was told the President had decided the error would have to be publicly admitted. At 10 p.m. the White House issued a statement.

It declared that the U.S. had not changed its policy on Israel, including the controversial issue of removing the settlements. Carter's view was that "this call for dismantling was neither proper nor practical." Later, one official bitterly charged, "The only reason he backed down was to lower the political heat."

Perhaps the most troubling failure in the President's peculiar performance was his inability to foresee the impact of his renunciation of the vote. Both diplomatically abroad and politically at home, the reversal appeared far worse than if he had just swallowed hard and ridden out whatever heat the vote had generated. Instead, neither Israel nor American Jews were mollified by the turnabout, the Arab world was outraged, and the President had given new life to all the old "flipflop" charges. Unfairly but perhaps understandably, a senior European diplomat asked: "He is the man with the finger on the nuclear button. What if he pushes it, then changes his mind?"

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