Mid-East Cools Off

Two subjects dominated the American press this week, and the developments in one may not have been unrelated to the events of the other.

Talk of impeachment probably occupied the American public a bit too much for President Nixon's tastes, and by the end of the week, the spectrum of Watergate-related happenings had to share the spotlight with the so-called Middle East crisis.

Even the revelation that Nixon vice presidential-designate Gerald R. Ford Jr. would back both an inquiry into the question of impeaching the president and the re-establishment of a special prosecutor's office was relegated to less glorious places in the nation's most touted newspapers.

But many Congressmen and political observers were questioning to what extent the Middle East "crisis" cited by Nixon was real, and what proportion represented White House machinations to divert public attention from Watergate.

By Thursday afternoon, the "crisis"--enlarged by an all-out American military alert--seemed to disappear when the United Nations voted to send a peace-keeping force to the Middle East, the first since 1967.

Last week, the State Department announced that Secretary Henry A. Kissinger '50, was forced to postpone this year's fling to the People's Republic of China because of pressing needs for his expertise in resolving the Mideast war and, by corollary, preserving the U.S.-Soviet detente.

Meanwhile, his boss twice postponed scheduled talks with his electorate--once a news conference, the other time, a televised address to the nation--that would presumably have allowed Nixon to defend himself before a constituency crying for nothing less than impeachment.

But the cease-fire arrangement worked out by Kissinger and Soviet officials in Moscow last week and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council failed. Newspaper and television news once again reverted to impeachment maneuverings as their lead stories.

So Thursday, the commander-inchief--who just one week before had asserted his authority in canning two of his most trusted subordinates--called a worldwide "precautionary alert" of American troops.

Nixon made himself more visible Thursday than he'd been for a week, if not equally as silent. His right-hand man, Kissinger, declared that the mobilization was necessary to avert a Soviet threat to move troops into the Middle East unilaterally in order to enforce the cease-fire.

Nixon ordered the military alert early Thursday morning as a precautionary measure, Kissinger told a news conference at midday. The Secretary of State said that American officials had noticed an "ambiguity in some of the actions and statements" of the Soviets.

Kissinger declined to give further details but referred to movement of Soviet troops inside the USSR and to statements by Moscow representatives to the United Nations.

But whatever the rationale, the crisis spawned by the all-out military alert had dwindled by Thursday afternoon when the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously (China abstained) to create a peace-keeping force in the Middle East without Soviet, U.S., or other big power troops.

So it appears the U.S. and U.S.S.R. won't be sending troops to the embattled Middle East. In their stead, a U.N. contingent of Austrian, Finnish and Swedish troops now stationed in Cyprus will be traveling to the ceasefire lines established last week.

But the U.S. will, with the Soviets--however reluctantly--send an observer team to the Middle East to oversee the cease-fire, the State Department announced yesterday.

Earlier in the week, the U.S. had vehemently rejected the Soviet-endorsed Egyptian proposal that a joint American-Soviet force police the cease-fire.

As the politics of the cease-fire were being worked out by big powers the battleground situation in the Middle East remained ambiguous throughout the week, Egypt and Israel exchanging charges that the other had violated the cease-fire accord. Clearly, the ceasefire was not being honored.

Egypt charged that Israel had continued to attack Suez City on the southern end of the Suez Canal's west bank. it also alleged that Israel was refusing to allow U.N. observers access to the area.

The U.N. peace-keeping force is the first in the Middle East since 1967. At that time, Egypt ordered a U.N. force to leave the Middle East shortly before the beginning of the 1967 war, the last major conflict between Israel and Arab states.