Hussein May Exert Some Diplomatic Clout in His Meeting with Nixon

King Hussein’s meeting this week with President Nixon may augur some changes, albeit minor, in the U.S. attitude toward the Arab world, according to some political analysts here. As they see it, the Jordanian monarch now has enough political and diplomatic clout to accomplish a two-fold objective: to convince the Administration that it ought to pressure Israel into an early settlement with her Arab neighbors and to undermine Israeli Premier Golda Meir’s meeting with Nixon next month.

Observers here say that Hussein will bring with him a number of aces in his diplomatic hag: his announcement last week that he will reactivate the Eastern Front provides him with the prestige of speaking for more than just Jordan, that this move, in effect, permits him to be an unofficial spokesman for a good part of the official Arab world; his announcement a week earlier that Jordan is willing to arrive at a peace settlement with Israel if the Moslem holy places in Jerusalem are placed under Jordanian control; and his statement this weekend in London calling for an ecumenical conclave of the three major religions, is viewed as another effort to present Jordan as a reasonable nation willing to recognize realities in the Middle East.

This weekend Hussein also stated in an interview with The Times of London that Security Council Resolution 242, “stripped of its secondary provisions, recognizes two fundamental principles as a basis for a just solution.” One principle cited by Hussein is that it calls “for Arab acceptance of a political fact of life which we have refused to admit, and fought to prevent, for a quarter of a century–the fact of Israel. The resolution bids us to reverse this stand and accept not only the presence of Israel but an Israel enclosed behind secure and recognized borders. To this, Jordan and Egypt have agreed.”

URGES U.S. TO ENFORCE RES. 242

Hussein in the same interview noted that “the time lag in converting a resolution into a working formula for peace” has led to hijacking and kidnapping on the part of the Arabs which he termed “senseless acts of a frustrated, defeated people,” and “annexing and desecrating the old Arab city of Jerusalem, coupled with wiping out villages and deporting the people of Gaza” on the part of Israel which he termed “the calculated acts of an arrogant victor.”

The Hashemite ruler added: “In Arab eyes, one force still to be put behind the 1967 resolution (242), publicly and more strongly, is the influence of the United States on both Arab and Israeli. The Arab needs to know that American friendship toward Israel is limited to its preservation, not to expansion. The Arab needs to know which borders the United States is prepared to guarantee. So does Israel.”

In the view of some political analysts in the nation’s capital, Hussein’s apparent reasonableness and even-handedness in dealing with both the Arabs and Israel will provide the Administration with enough diplomatic food for thought to make Mrs. Meir’s approach to Nixon seem like “a hard line and an intransigent attitude.”