Carter for President? When?
ALAN, RAY
Euro vista BY RAY ALAN Carter for President? When? European politicians and commentators are sighing over President Carter's Administration the way Americans used to sigh over erratic governments...
...For this reason, commentators over here tend to scrutinize his performance as keenly as they watch that of their local politicians...
...Any thought of the Turkish establishment stamping out of nato and throwing itself in Russia's arms is ludicrous: The last thing any Turk, outside the small Communist movement, wants is a tete-a-tete with the Kremlin...
...In Madrid, the other day, he said: "In the Soviet Union we suffer from an excess of democracy...
...And, unfortunately, nice men are not usually the shrewdest politicians...
...So, naturally, the Israelis tore up their plan for a limited advance and dashed forward, rapidly and explosively, to occupy as much land as possible in order to put a wide UN-controlled neutral zone between the Palestinians and their border...
...A coup in Saudi Arabia might leave anti-Western forces in possession of sophisticated American weapons and installations...
...Naturally, Spanish officials denied that Madrid had a hand in the attack and charged Algeria with having staged it in order to undermine Spain's efforts to dissuade the OAU from supporting the Canarian independence movement...
...Most West European governments are worried about Washington's failure (not wholly Carter's, of course, but he is where the buck stops) to adopt a muscular energy policy aimed at reducing oil imports and weakening the opec cartel...
...But talking isn't enough...
...One's heart bleeds for those poor misrepresented sheikhs, toiling away beneath the merciless Arabian sun...
...Even when unidentified hands injected mercury into a few Israeli and (presumably by mistake) Spanish oranges in northern Europe earlier this year, the Spanish state radio suppressed a report that Arabs were suspected and blamed "Israeli secret services" for trying to harm Spanish citrus exports...
...Two or three hours later, the Algerian police arrested a Spaniard named Juan Antonio Gonzalez who admitted having tried to kill Cubillo-whom he described as a CIA agent-on the orders of a small terrorist group, frap (the Revolutionary Antifascist Patriotic Front), frap is known by the police forces of Algeria and France (where, during Franco's last years, it organized operations intended to discredit Spanish republican exiles) to be controlled by a Spanish secret service...
...The belief in Madrid is that Colonel Houari Boumedienne, the Algerian chief of state, is exploiting the Canaries issue mainly in the hope of persuading Spain and Morocco (which also has a keen interest in the islands) to cut him into their deal on the Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony containing one of the world's richest phosphate deposits...
...It is arguable that, for military and economic reasons, Turkey needs nato-especially the United States-more than nato needs Turkey, despite the importance of those defense installations Washington wishes to recover...
...The Paris Monde observes: "He seems incapable of defining a policy and pursuing it consistently...
...The fact that MPAIAC is a protege of Algeria and is supported by most Arab League members has caused a number of Spaniards to urge their government to reconsider its policy, inherited from General Franco, of nonrecognition of Israel...
...Most Socialists and Communists consider the neutron bomb a typically capitalist weapon intended to kill people but preserve property...
...and the man Gonzalez said briefed him was identified as a former member of the political branch of the Spanish Civil Guard...
...Other ideas, financial and technical, have been worked out...
...He talks of helping the underprivileged and attacks special-interest groups...
...Some specific grumbles: •Energy...
...The islands belong to Spain, but a small independence movement (MPAIAC) insists on their African character and occasionally lets off a bomb...
...Anyway, a more serious blow to the U.S.-morally and politically as well as strategically, since Greece is a democracy and has a special place in all Western hearts-would be a Greek decision to quit nato and opt for anti-American "nonalignment...
...Carter looks like a one-term President," people say, and you are expected to reply "When...
...Some Spanish papers played up the Sefardi (Spanish) origin of Israel's new president, Yitzhak Navon...
...Greece and Turkey...
...Having pressed the West German and British governments to agree to its deployment, President Carter decided to postpone producing it, slickly pulling the rug from under Helmut Schmidt and James Callaghan: The German and British leaders were left looking foolish-and more papist than the nuclear pope...
...While the Israelis were still reconnoitering Palestinian strongholds, the U.S...
...Two years ago, Spain abandoned the territory to Morocco and Mauritania, while retaining an economic stake in it, and ever since then, by diplomatic pressure and support of a local guerrilla movement, Colonel Boumedienne has been trying to acquire a share of the loot...
...But the violence of a small minority of Greeks cannot justify Turkey's invasion and virtual annexation of 38 per cent of Cyprus, barely 20 per cent of whose population is of Turkish origin...
...Now some Spanish commentators are alleging that African interest in the Canary Islands has been fomented by Washington in order to stampede Spain into joining nato...
...Many of these commentators are now describing Jimmy Carter as an insouciant muddlehead who is fiddling while the dollar, and Western prosperity, burn...
...Many of them had a rough time at the hands of Greek-Cy-priot advocates of Enosis—union with Greece-a few years ago...
...The paper had referred to oil sheikhs who stash their "loot" in London...
...A series of coups left Britain friendless in those countries and put the hardware it had supplied them with into hostile hands...
...Professor M. A. Adelman, of MIT, has recently reminded us that some of President Carter's own advisers have recommended a proposal for sealed-bid auctions of oil import entitlements that would, in effect, enable the United States to "levy an oil import fee paid by opec...
...But Madrid officialdom, eager to attract Arab investment and loans, is scared of possible economic reprisals by the Arabs...
...Nothing less is needed to buttress the dollar and hearten the West's flagging economies...
...I am aware that the Turkish Cyp-riots have a case...
...Having voiced these and other criticisms, Europeans will usually add something like: "It's a pity...
...We Western journalists have been misrepresenting Russia and its rulers, too, according to the director of Prav-da, Victor Afanassiev...
...threatens to create instability...
...A Matter of Perspective That word "loot" reminds me of a letter in a British periodical a few days ago...
...Carter seems a nice sort of man...
...The letter, from Jidda, Saudi Arabia, said: "It is highly objectionable to refer to this hard-earned money as loot...
...he is too easily diverted by the pressures of the moment, internal or international...
...Canary Drama The Canary Islands, a strategic constellation of rocks off the coast of northwest Africa, have become the center of a drama involving the Organization for African Unity (OAU), the Arab League, the Spanish government, a Spanish secret service, and two terrorist organizations...
...The United States, Israel and the CIA have walk-on parts...
...so did French, Senegalese and other UN troops ambushed by Palestinian forces the Israelis did not have time to mop up...
...and aircraft operating from the big new Saudi base at Tabuk (built with U.S...
...He added that when Russia's new constitution was "debated" [sic] his paper received 35,000 letters from readers, most of whom advocated "more discipline...
...Conservatives, many liberals and some Social Democrats (mainly in West Germany) see it as a shield against the Soviet bloc's massive tank forces...
...The President of the United States is also, God help him, ringmaster of the whole Western circus...
...And they suspect Carter may be making the same kind of mistake as the Whitehall officials who, in the late 1940s and '50s, tied Britain too closely to the palace cliques ruling Transjordan, Iraq, Egypt, and Libya...
...Was it credible, they asked, that a trained knifeman like Gonzalez should have failed to kill the unarmed, unaccompanied Cubillo, if he had really wanted to...
...What is needed now is a little willpower...
...Abroad, his waywardness in policymaking...
...European politicians and commentators are sighing over President Carter's Administration the way Americans used to sigh over erratic governments in France and Britain a few years ago...
...At home," says the London Economist, "Mr...
...Can't you just see Party boss Leonid 1. Brezhnev, torn between Pravda's backwoodsmen and his own liberal instincts...
...Lebanon...
...Has nobody told the White House about the growing anti-American, and anti-nato, feeling in Greece...
...In April, the leader of MPAIAC, Antonio Cubillo, was stabbed, though not fatally, outside his home in Algiers...
...Many European observers believe the Carter Administration's fear of offending the Saudi family is partly to blame for its energy brownout...
...Lebanese civilians suffered...
...Administration informed them that it would press for their speedy withdrawal and replacement by UN forces...
...The neutron bomb...
...assistance 130 miles east of the Gulf of Aqaba), could attack Israel and Western shipping and other interests in the Gulf of Suez and Eastern Mediterranean...
...On May 8 an Algerian tribunal condemned Gonzalez to death, but Spanish officials say they will be surprised if he is executed...
...The Saudis...
...or "You mean you think he'll be elected in 1980...
...Carter is more of a tinkerer than a social engineer...
...Many people feel that the Carter Administration is too eager to appease the Turkish government and to forget the victims of Turkey's invasion of Cyprus...
...yet this is precisely what President Carter's partiality for Turkish delight is in danger of bringing about...
Vol. 61 • June 1978 • No. 12
