Utility Of Visits Questioned

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30737, 29 April 1965, Page 19

Utility Of Visits Questioned

(From

FRANK OLIVER,

N.Z.P.A.,

Special Correspondent.)

WASHINGTON, April 28. The President has been in a certain amount of hot water lately because he has suggested that some visits of foreign dignitaries be postponed and because he himself has cancelled plans for visits overseas. It was not only in New Delhi and Karachi that hard words were said. Some sections of the press here reproved Mr Johnson though more in sorrow than in anger. They thought he was being a bad diplomatist. The word even got round that he cancelled the Shastri and Ayub

Khan visits because he did not like what they were saying about American policy in Vietnam. This was because the President is notoriously thinskinned. It led commentators to jump to the conclusion he was irritated by statements from Pakistan and India. But now a number of people have jumped to Mr Johnson’s defence. It is realised that he cannot do everything, not even everything he would like to do. The plain fact is that the ceremonial visit to Washington is a system that is getting out of hand. ‘Head Man’ People ask if the Vice-Presi-dent cannot receive and entertain these distinguished visitors. Of course he could, and would do it ably. But the

fact is that every head of state or Prime Minister or Foreign Minister who comes here wants to see and talk to the “head man,” the man who is running this show. The situation is bedevilled by two things. The first is jealousy. If one head of state comes then those who feel on a level of equality also want to come or else they feel they are being slighted.

The second thing is that a great many people who are running for office or campaigning to remain in office like to do as much of their electioneering as possible in Washington. It seems to have become the ambition of every leading politician the world around to “make his number” in Washington and with no one else but the President. As James Reston said recently. the Italian Premier had nothing urgent to discuss with Mr Johnson. He had just taken office and wanted to get acquainted in Washington. The ritual is always the same, a State dinner at the White House, a high-level lunch with Dean Rusk as host, two or three conferences plus, of course, return entertaining at the embassy concerned, plus, of course, the ritual of arrival and departure at the airport. Usually there is also a press conference at which the

President is expected to take part. The whole thing takes up a lot of the President’s time. It is now known that the Ayub Khan and Shastri visits were not cancelled out of hand by a casual mention at a news conference. Those concerned were told well in advance of that announcement.

The best explanation is not only that these ceremonial visits are getting to be too much of a good thing, but also that the two visitors from the Indian sub-continent would have arrived when foreign aid was being discussed in Congress. Their stands against American Vietnam policies would scarcely have helped that debate.

Folly Occupied

Ip any event there is plenty to keep the man in the White House fully occupied, and these ceremonial visits by heads of State and Prime Ministers are said by some to be out of date diplomacy.

They started, of course, during World War 11, when everybody of any importance on the Allied side came to see President Roosevelt. They are often useful, but they do include some that are not of enormous importance.