As Congress debates the agreement with Iran, there will be much bluster in the next couple of months about bomb grade fuel, breakout times, centrifuges, heavy water reactors, stockpiles of enriched uranium, and, of course, the impediments to inspection. But all this technical stuff will have nothing to do with what really bothers the most blustering of the nay sayers. In their view, we had the Iranians down. It hurt so bad they were screaming for us to let go. And now, for a bunch of promises, we are letting go. Soon they will bounce up, stronger than ever and just as defiant...

[OPINION] Private pro-democracy groups funded by the U.S. have a troubling history. Now that seven American pro-democracy workers have been allowed to post bail and return to the United States, perhaps we can examine what the U.S. was up to in Egypt using reason instead of patriotic emotion. The Egyptian furor over such seemingly idealistic work may strike us as wild and idiotic, but in fact, the Egyptians have a right to be suspicious. America's attempt to promote democracy around the world through private organizations has unsavory beginnings and a sometimes troubling history...

For many years, I have felt that the American way of democracy, with its federalism and checks & balances, could serve as a helpful model for peoples trying to forge some way of democracy for themselves. This is especially true in countries of the developing world that have to reconcile competing and sometimes conflicting tribes and religions. The Americans on trial in Cairo obviously agreed with me and were trying to impart some aspects of the American way to Egyptians about to embark on the democratic adventure. It would be a great travesty if the Americans were jailed for their efforts. Egypt would deserve the condemnation that would surely spew forth from irate Americans if their compatriots were punished so severely. Yet there is more to the case than a clash between American idealism and Egyptian stupidity...

After the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended in the last decade of the 20th century, American strategists turned their sights on another threat: the potential havoc that might come from a group of smaller countries like North Korea and Iran that the Americans called "rogue states." That name was a wonderful metaphor. It reminded everyone of "rogue elephant," the term that hunters and wildlife experts use for an elephant that breaks from the herd, follows its own rules, and goes on wild rampages. The antics of a rogue elephant sounded just like the threat of a rogue state, especially a rogue state trying to arm itself with nuclear weapons. But the metaphor had one flaw. No one tries to negotiate with rogue elephants. Hunters simply kill them...

A talented, ambitious woman whose judgment is clouded by intense loyalty. In late August 2005, Condoleezza Rice stepped into a Broadway theater to see the musical "Spamalot." At the end, when the lights came on, some in the audience noticed the secretary of State. Evidently angry about both the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, they stood up and booed. A careful, well-documented new biography, "Condoleezza Rice: An American Life," will not dissipate such anger. Elisabeth Bumiller, who covered the White House for the New York Times during most of George W. Bush's presidency, has labored to present an evenhanded look at Rice. She shows some sympathy for her subject and even more understanding. But, in the end, this is a portrait of a talented, ambitious woman who has allowed intense loyalty to cloud her judgment and good sense...

Recent weeks have brought us so much blather about the war in Iraq that it is difficult to hold on to realities. But let’s try. The President gave us his latest speech on Iraq in September. I often wonder who listens to him any more, who believes him any more. Yet I can’t help finding a certain fascination with his oratory. I am always astonished at what he will come up with next. He has a new though clunky slogan: Return on Success. Since the success is imperceptible, his pullback of troops is insignificant. But he does not say that, of course...

The enthusiasts who stormed into Iraq are incapable of letting go. It is not so much that President Bush and Vice President Cheney cannot face defeat. Far more important, they cannot face the enormity of the mindlessness that powered them to war. So they are hanging on with a stubborn show of honor and even political courage, persuaded that, despite their mistakes and misadventures, history will absolve them. To keep on in the face of congressional harassment and public discontent, they are spewing a lot of cant about terrorism, micromanagement, chaos and patriotism. It is not easy to see the awful situation clearly...

This is the season for summing up the legacy of Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General whose ten-year reign comes to an end on December 31. Just a few weeks ago, I attended a day-long seminar at Georgetown University assessing his "legacy for Africa." The forty scholars, diplomats and civil servants agreed that Africa had benefited from his campaigns against AIDS and poverty, his hectoring against military coups, his championing of peacekeeping missions, and his remarkable doctrine asserting that the UN has the right to trump sovereignty and cross any border to stop a government from abusing its peoples...

[OPINION] AMERICAN POLITICIANS have urged U.N. reform for decades. Lately, the cries have become so loud and incessant that it is hard to imagine what will satisfy the critics. Abolish the veto for all nations save the United States and elect John Bolton as secretary-general? Strange as it seems, even those steps might not be enough -- not for critics whose demands for reform mask a deeper goal. They will not be satisfied unless the U.N. submits to the will of the United States. I do not doubt that the U.N. needs reform -- just look at the scandal in the U.N.'s oil-for-food program for Iraq. But let’s put this into perspective...

When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations, she proclaimed that he would serve in the tradition of our best ambassadors “with the strongest voices.” She cited Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jean Kirkpatrick as the models. But the Bolton nomination hardly fits any historical tradition. It is a defiance of history...

More than 30 years ago, during the dark days of the despicable Idi Amin, I would yearn for some way for the world to rid itself of tyrants. As a foreign correspondent covering Africa for the Los Angeles Times, the injustice of it all would torment me. Why should innocent people be forced to endure the terror and poverty inflicted upon them by the cruel whims of Idi Amin? Why should they be condemned because of their accidental birth in an unwieldy country put together by European colonial pooh-bahs in the 19th century? Could not some international entity like the United Nations be empowered to pluck him away?

So much wonderful critique of the Bushites, the foolish war, the botched occupation and the torture scandal has come forth recently (especially the articles by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker, the daily news coverage in the New York Times and the Washington Post, and the extraordinary book of James Mann on Bush’s Vulcans) that there is no need to add comment. But I would like to summarize a little...

THE U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have ignited so much confusion, controversy and cant that myriad books are sure to descend upon us for many years, all promising to shed light on the morass. Here are three of the first, all very different. The most surprising is “Allies: The U.S., Britain, and Europe in the Aftermath of the Iraq War” by William Shawcross, a British journalist who established himself in 1979 with the publication of “Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia,” an attack on U.S. intervention in Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The intervention in Iraq does not bother him at all. In fact, he hails President Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and their allies as “courageous in their determination finally to confront a regime that was an intolerable burden to its own people and an unacceptable affront to the world.” If you view the invasion as a misguided adventure, as I do, yet admire Shawcross enormously, as I do, the book may make you feel like the little boy in front of Shoeless Joe Jackson...

[OPINION] If Saddam Hussein had few or no weapons of mass destruction, why did he act as if he possessed arsenals of them? Why did Iraqis harass U.N. inspectors, bar their entry into certain buildings and sneak trucks out the back gates of compounds if there was nothing to hide? Analysts have been quick to suggest reasons. A prevailing view is machismo -- Hussein was trying to conceal his weakness, not his strength. Some experts, such as former weapons inspector David Kay, have said that scientists, seeking to enrich themselves with funds for phony projects, hoodwinked Hussein, not the inspectors. But one factor, just as important as the others, has been overlooked. U.N. inspections were undercut from the start by U.S. policy.

[OPINION] A little more than 50 years ago, the United States signed a pact with Generalissimo Francisco Franco allowing U.S. military forces to use air and naval bases in Spain. The agreement was a momentous event for Spain, and its repercussions still matter. For Americans, however, the pact, though significant, was a minor moment in the Cold War. U.S. historians barely mention it. The 50th anniversary passed in September with hardly any notice in Washington. Yet, the event should not be overlooked, especially at a time when the president proclaims his commitment to whip up democracy throughout the Middle East. The pact is a bald and astonishing example of how easily the United States can abandon a commitment to freedom -- even one for which almost 300,000 American soldiers died during World War II. What counted more in 1953 -- and probably still does -- was stability and the U.S. perception of what is best for the United States in the short term...

More than 40 years ago, I sat in the Western Nigeria House of Assembly in Ibadan and marveled at how well the British colonial government had implanted its democratic parliamentary system into this new African country. An African page in blue knee breeches and red stockings walked into the chamber carrying a mace. “The Speak-uh,” he cried. The Speaker, a tall African in white wig and black robes, entered, strode across the chamber and sat in his enormous chair. The page carefully put the mace on its stand on the table below the Speaker and saluted him...

In the 1990s, while I was covering the United Nations for the Los Angeles Times, Madeleine Albright approached my table at a banquet in New York. My wife hugged her warmly, exclaiming: “Madeleine, you’re doing a wonderful job as U.N. ambassador!” “Yes,” Albright replied, “but Stanley doesn’t think so.” I grinned foolishly. I kept recalling that encounter as I read this engaging memoir of a remarkable foreign-born woman who came here as a refugee child and later negotiated the political thickets of Washington to become this nation’s first female secretary of State. No one could accuse Madeleine Albright of timidity; she is always blunt and direct. Perhaps more important, the remark reflected a troubling reality: Although I admired and respected her, I often found her words and actions as U.N. ambassador and secretary of State disappointing. I was not alone. She faced a barrage of criticism from reporters, foreign policy wonks and State Department professionals throughout her tenure. This book is her spirited defense...

Those of us who opposed the war were probably right. Iraq posed no danger to Americans. It had few, if any, prohibited weapons ready to strike. No link with terrorism was ever proven. No doubt Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant but we have always tolerated - and still do - a globe full of them. But none of this really matters. We might as well, like Lear, rail at the wind and storms. History belongs to the victors. Only they can gloat...

The United Nations has been castigated by critics for weeks as a toothless organization loaded with appeasers and weasels, as a throwback to the League of Nations, as a cracked body tottering on the brink of irrelevance. George F. Will, the erudite conservative columnist, even suggested it was heading the way of the medieval Hanseatic League. Yet the current Iraq crisis may actually prove one of the UN's finest hours...

We have seen a frightening performance in the last few weeks. President George W. Bush has shown us the ease with which a relentless and obsessed president, wielding simplistic language, exaggerating dangers, distorting history, invoking patriotism, churning fear and nightmarish memories, can smother debate and take almost all of us along for his ride...

To make cold sense out of the events of last year, I have been trying to order some of my thoughts. The situation is so complex that it spawns at least a dozen issues: 1. The destruction of the World Trade Center was a despicable, incredible act that can not be justified in any way. Americans have the right to feel fury and contempt for the perpetrators and those who gloat over their deed. Their deed was so foul that I turn away from the television screen whenever the events of September 11th are replayed. I feel too drained, at least so far, to spend time at Ground Zero when in New York...

El ataque terrorista que destruyó las Torres Gemelas y causó importantes daños en el Pentágono fue un acto que no tiene justificación alguna y ante el que había que responder. Pero, aunque la tragedia fue de gran magnitud, los Estados Unidos no pueden enfrascarse en una guerra de castigo unilateral contra los países que componen lo que Bush llama el "eje del mal", desvirtuando la actuación internacional contra los movimientos terroristas y convirtiéndola en una guerra abierta de devastación de territorios y poblaciones civiles...

An all-out American war against terrorism is unprecedented. But much of the rhetoric by our politicians has a familiar ring. The president says we are in a "crusade" against "a new kind of evil" and that each nation must decide whether "you are with us or you are with the terrorists." ... These words echo from the past in an eerie way. I heard these kind of arguments from American politicians and diplomats often as a foreign and Washington correspondent for more than 30 years during the Cold War...

I have just finished reading Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey by Michael Dobbs, the second Albright biography that I have read in a year. The other was Seasons of Her Life by Ann Blackman. That's a lot of biography for a secretary of state in office. I don't believe anyone ever wrote one about Warren Christopher, and I haven't heard of any publishing house hawking a Christopher bio now that he's out of office. But Madeline Albright is a secretary of state with pizzazz, sort of like a rock star...

The backbiting and ass-covering erupted in Washington soon after the bombs began pounding Yugoslavia in March. The rush to escape and stamp blame was clear evidence that something had gone awry. The powers in the capital had obviously hoped and expected Slobodan Milosevic to put up no more than a show of resistance before signing with shaking hands any damn paper we would set before him. His defiance and the terrible fury hurled at the Kosovo Albanians surprised President Clinton and his foreign policy mavens. No matter how loud NATO and Washington may trumpet victory at the end, there is no doubt that a grievous miscalculation occurred at the beginning. And most people are blaming Secretary of State Madeleine Albright...

The American impasse on Iraq derives from two American faults: sound-bite thinking and too much empty bombast. For almost a decade, American policy towards Saddam Hussein has been based on the assumption that he can't last very long. This has produced a lot of threats and blather without too much thought about what would happen if someone didn't rescue us from our threats...

In the "good old days" of the late 1960s, when Zaire was known as the Congo and its leader did not yet call himself Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu waza Banga (the all-conquering warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake), the United States proudly had the huge, unwieldy, volatile country wrapped around its little finger...

When Secretary of State Madeleine Albright showed up for a breakfast session with the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times recently (an event carried live on C-Span television), she began by chiding the reporters: "It is a sign of my undying affection for the Los Angeles Times that I'm here, but I don't know why I came, because you're the only paper in the United States that did not put my picture on the front page, my brilliant performance throwing out the ball..."

In the 1970s, when Kurt Waldheim was Secretary-General, reporters at the United Nations used to call him The Headwaiter. "He always stood there," recalled Don Shannon, the U.N. correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in those days, "as if he were wringing his hands on a towel, asking what he could do for the powerful countries." That kind of a scene would warm the hearts of American officials these days...

Spanish and U.S. officials failed again Friday to reach agreement on a new treaty to keep U.S. military bases in Spain, sending their negotiations into a critical final phase that will determine the bases’ fate. Both sides sought to minimize their failure and emphasized that they have decided to meet next month for an eighth round of talks on the bases, which grew out of a joint defense agreement signed in 1953, when Gen. Francisco Franco was the chief of state. But Spanish officials said they will formally notify the United States by letter next week that they do not want the present treaty automatically extended for another year when it lapses next May 14. That, in effect, sets a six-month deadline for the two sides to agree on a new treaty...

Americans, when they think of Mexico, see it as a pleasant place for midwinter holidays, a rich source of (perhaps authentic) pre-Columbian treasures, an accommodating provider of divorces, or a more or less permanent refuge from the demands of 20th-century industrial life. However, Mexico presents no problems, and therefore Americans do not think about it very much. But for Mexicans, the United States is the big problem and they think about it all the time. They have been doing so with renewed intensity during the current administration of President Luis Echeverria, a proud, ambitious man in a proud, small country. Mexican relations with the United States have long been founded on humiliation and dependence. Mexicans know that the United States is usually strong enough to work its will - whether conquering all the land from Texas to California or invading in pursuit of bandits or closing the border to punish Mexico for lax drug enforcement. All this is seen by Mexicans as a reflection of their weakness as much as American strength. It is not an easy assessment for them to accept. No matter how urbane he may seem, a Mexican official has trouble keeping resentment out of his feelings when he deals with the United States...

American foreign aid is returning to the scene of one of its greatest disasters - Haiti. In 1963, the Agency for International Development (AID) closed its mission in Port-au-Prince and suspended most American aid there. The U.S. Government was at last fed up with the corruption, repression and harassment of the strange and tyrannical regime of the late President François Duvalier, better known as Papa Doc. Papa Doc died three years ago, and Haiti is now ruled by his 22-year-old son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, who, like his father, bears the title of President-for-Life. Last year, AID sent a chief of mission down to Haiti for the first time in a decade. Plans have been made, and agreements have been signed. Now Haiti will have an American aid program about as large as it used to be before the United States gave up on Papa Doc. U.S. officials have persuaded themselves that the regime of the son will be easier to work with than that of his father. They believe it is less corrupt and tyrannical and more efficient. Some even insist that Papa Doc's rule wasn't as bad as painted by Graham Greene, the movies and the American press. In any case, they say, something must be done to help the people of Haiti, who are among the poorest in the world...

The difficult negotiations now in process between the United States and Panama over a new Panama Canal treaty are almost certain to ignore the rights of one people: the descendants of the blacks who dug the canal in the first place. “We are just hoping,” said a black who lives in the U.S. Canal Zone, “that whatever happens between the two countries, our position doesn’t become worse.” It probably will. Although Americans look on the Panama Canal as one of their great engineering achievements, it was dug mainly by foreign workers, mostly blacks from the West Indies. Few of these blacks left when the job was finished in 1914. They stayed on to help run the canal or to work in Panama. Their children did the same. As a result, Panama’s two main ports, Panama City and Colón, have urban ghettos of English-speaking blacks in the slums near the U.S. Canal Zone, and the Canal Zone itself has embarrassing communities of virtually segregated blacks. They are a people without power. Although many are America-oriented, they are not American. Although they are now citizens of Panama, they are a distant cultural minority. Their descendants will probably be assimilated, some day into the racially mixed Panamanian culture, but that does not help the present generations...

When he gets to reviewing American images and interventions abroad, President Nixon might start with the way in which the State Department and other U.S. Government agencies overseas are sometimes upstaged by an old foe of his — American labor. For years, the AFL-CIO has pursued its own foreign policy in Latin America, boasting, among other things, of how it helped to bring down Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana (now Guyana). Now it is turning to Africa. Since the AFL-CIO activity there is fairly new, that might be a good place for President Nixon to choke it off. In its foreign operations, American labor sometimes acts, or tries to act, as an arm of the U.S. Government. But it can be an uncontrollable arm. In January, 1968, for example, Vice President Humphrey visited Kenya with a large party that included Irving Brown, executive director of the African American Labor Center, the main agency for AFL-CIO’s activities on that continent. American Ambassador Glenn W. Ferguson thought it unwise to include Brown because he is disliked by many Kenya leaders, who believe he has shown too much favoritism to Minister for Economic Planning Tom Mboya...

In 1963, during a Security Council debate on apartheid, Adlai Stevenson announced dramatically that the United States had banned all sale of arms to the Republic of South Africa. The step had been taken, he said, to show America’s deep concern that South Africa refused to abandon its racist policies. In March of this year, a reactor went critical at a research center near Pretoria, and South Africa joined the nuclear age. The feat was made possible by the firm that designed and built the equipment: Allis-Chalmers of Milwaukee. Juxtaposed, the two events drive home some little-known truths about America and apartheid. The United States, while mouthing its disdain for the Afrikaan regime, is an accelerator of the economic boom that insures the Verwoerd government’s confidence and self-righteousness. As an investor in South Africa and as a trading partner, the United States is outranked only by Great Britain. The investments and the volume of trade rise month by month. Seeing this growing American entanglement, South Africa takes with a grain of salt any rude comments that may come from official American sources...

The Alliance for Progress, whatever it signifies for Latin America, has meant for American labor an alliance with government and big business. American labor has never minced words about the unions of the Soviet Union. “The so-called trade unions in the USSR,” the AFL-CIO Executive Council has proclaimed, “are nothing but agencies of the Communist dictatorship.” The implication, sharp and clear, has always been: Unions of America are anything but agencies of government and big business. That has been a pride of American labor, but the new alliance raises questions that may make that pride ring a bit hollow. British Guiana is a good place to begin. American Government, business and labor have never been happy with the leftist administration of Cheddi Jagan that took office after the August, 1961, elections in the British colony. American woes and worries have multiplied with the approach of independence. The AFL-CIO boasts of its part in helping the trade unions there battle the Jagan government. “In British Guiana,” said a recent union advertisement, ‘‘the AFL-CIO has rendered generous aid to the free trade unions resisting the attempt of the pro-Communist Jagan regime to destroy their independence.” On the surface, American labor has moved into British Guiana to help brother unions fight communism. But the situation in British Guiana is far more complicated than that, and its “generous aid” has involved the AFL-CIO in racial and political strife. In addition, not all the aid given by the AFL-CIO has come from the labor treasury...

For the first time, the United States is at the door of the International Monetary Fund as a borrower. Few people prophesied this when the Fund was founded at the United Nations Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. But obviously times have changed. The United States which had huge supplies of gold in the early postwar period, has found its supplies dwindling. That is why President Kennedy told Congress Thursday that the United States has been authorized to draw up to $500 million worth of currencies from the Fund this year. This transaction is a classic example of how a nation uses the Fund when it has a balance of payments problem. That's what the Fund is for, and other countries have been using it for years. The United States has a balance of payments problem because it sends more dollars overseas than it takes in...

William C. Foster, United States disarmament director, predicts a safe passage in the Senate for any nuclear test ban treaty signed by Russia and the West. He does not agree with those who predict that a treaty would provoke the most bruising battle in the Senate since the proposal to join the League of Nations after World War I. Nor does he believe it would suffer the same dismal fate. “It would be tough,” the 66-year-old Mr. Foster said in an interview, “but we could get a treaty through the Senate." Mr. Foster, director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, will not take part in the United States-British-Russian nuclear test-ban treaty negotiations in Moscow next month. But, from his office here, he will back up the efforts of the American negotiators. The chief negotiator for the United States at the Moscow talks, scheduled for next month, will be Undersecretary of State Averell Harriman...

President Kennedy announced Monday that the United States, Russia and Britain have agreed to send high-level negotiators to Moscow next month in a fresh start at hammering out a nuclear test-ban treaty. He said the agreement to start the high-level talks had been reached by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and himself. In the meantime, the President announced, the United States will not conduct any nuclear tests in the atmosphere - so long as the Soviet Union and other nations hold back on their tests, too. Mr. Kennedy spoke of the talks as a badly needed first start on negotiations "where the end is in sight." But he cautioned that his announcements were "no substitute for a formal binding treaty - but I hope it will help us achieve it." British officials seemed more optimistic...

The dark lean man joins President Kennedy. They chat on the yacht, Honey Fitz, at Palm Beach. They laugh during the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia. They applaud a performance of "Irma la Douce" at Washington's National theater. They dine at a private party in the White House. Their friendship and companionship is rare and near unprecedented in Washington. The lean man, a year younger than the President has a high forehead, long swept-back hair, and a sharp very British nose. He is Sir David Ormsby Gore, a friend of John F. Kennedy from younger, more carefree days. He is a politician. He is the heir of a nobleman. And he is the British ambassador to the United States. Traditionally a British ambassador should be a career diplomat, advanced in years, prim and proper in his dealings with the chief of state. Ormsby Gore is a politician in his first post as ambassador, the only political appointment in the entire British foreign service, 44 years old, and the constant companion of his old friend Jack, who happens to be chief of state...

FOREIGN AID PATTERN - Will the developing nations have to adjust their sights and hopes to meet the new look in American foreign aid? Officials at the Agency for International Development (AID) have declined to divulge just how the new guidelines for foreign aid will affect specific nations. But non-government experts surveyed by the Associated Press have applied the principles laid down by Gen. Lucius Clay's special study committee and by President Kennedy in his foreign aid message to congress on Tuesday, and generally have come up with these conclusions...

Rep. Otto Passman, D-La., said today he finally feels vindicated in his long battle against foreign aid "but vindicated in words, not in action." So he still will wield his ax when President Kennedy's $4.5 billion foreign aid bill comes his way. For nine years, the ax of this dapper, jocular 62-year-old businessman from Monroe, La., has been a major obstacle for any foreign aid bill trying to wend its way through Capitol Hill. No bill has emerged unscathed. Passman derives his power from his position as chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations. He derives his distaste for foreign aid from a simple philosophy, "Head to a bar tonight and watch some people drinking cocktails," he said in an Interview. "Then watch the drama that unfolds each time the waiter brings the check. Everyone grabs for it. We are a nation of check grabbers...."

[Christian A. Herter, U.S. trade negotiator, discusses in this exclusive interview the prospect for battering down foreign tariffs.] Christian A. Herter, special U.S. trade negotiator, said today he does not feel that the significance of his new job was shattered by the recent French veto of Britain's entry into the Common Market. "In some respects the veto enhanced the importance of the trade expansion program." Herter said in an interview. "It certainly complicated the matter." Just how much the matter has been complicated may become clear in the next two months when international trade experts meet in Geneva. The Geneva talks may determine whether Herter, armed with the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, can help batter down foreign tariffs and launch booming, new U.S. trade in the 1960s. Some congressmen have introduced bills that would amend the Trade Expansion Act to get around the French veto. The amendments would allow Herter to negotiate for the complete elimination of tariffs when the United States, the Common Market, and Britain together account for 80 per cent of the world's trade...

[EDITOR'S NOTE - Although the United States owns more than $3.8-billion worth of foreign currencies, it often has to dip into its own gold supply to meet expenditures abroad.] Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, D-N.Y., squired two good-looking, female assistants to the Lido night club in Paris last summer and paid his way with U.S.-owned francs. The night on the town provoked outcries back home. Powell had a quick defense. He quoted Secretary of the Treasury Douglas Dillon as saying if Powell and other congressmen didn't use these francs the U. S. government would have to burn them. "This is money going right down the drain," Powell said. Dillon said he had no recollection of making the remarks and added that he felt these funds "require the same prudent management and careful handling as any other moneys of the government." In fact, other administration officials say that most times that a congressman uses funds like these, he forces the United States to buy more foreign currencies with American dollars. Powell's night on the town, the outcry, his defense, and the denial by Dillon reflect one of the most complex and massive problems in American international finance... [article also published in the Congressional Record Appendix, 13 March 1963, p. A1354]

A News Analysis - Is the present furor over Cuba based on fluff or substance? The real answer may lie in the secret correspondence of Soviet Premier Khrushchev and President Kennedy. In the last few weeks of controversy and confusion, an odd drama has been played In Washington. Critics first railed at the administration, crying that Soviet missiles and missile sites still remain in Cuba. The storm drove the administration into an unprecedented picture-show defense of its intelligence operations. But, in the defense, the administration revealed a concern and an uneasiness not about missile and missile sites but about the removal of Soviet troops. None of the published correspondence between Khrushchev and Kennedy contains any promise to remove Russian troops from Cuba. But the secret correspondence reportedly does. In short, the critics, still may have helped draw attention to a raw nerve of the administration on Cuba policy...

Exact Cost To US Hard To Determine IRS Official Says - The United States government, through loss of tax revenue, will share substantially in the cost of paying the ransom that brought the 1113 Bay of Pigs prisoners back from Cuba. The exact cost to the treasury and thus to the taxpayers may be impossible to determine. But one official, Mitchell Rogovin of the Internal Revenue Service, estimated today that the tax loss, at the highest, could reach $20,000,000 spread over three years. Rogovin added in an interview that the loss could be less. And he stressed he considered it a loss only in the sense that every time there is a disaster relief or community chest drive, the government loses tax revenue through income tax deductions...

President Kennedy has promised no more than sympathy to those bargaining for the release of 1113 Bay of Pigs prisoners. But the evidence is clear that he has given more. Official statements in Washington maintain that the committee now negotiating with Fidel Castro in Cuba for the release of the prisoners is a private one, supported by private funds. But the prisoners, if they are released, will owe their freedom in large measure to the U.S. government. It is doubtful that the private committee could complete a deal of such magnitude without active support of the Kennedy Administration

THE UNITED STATES hovers over the Dominican Republic these days, waiting eagerly for a reward. The reasoning is simple: Everyone sees that the regime of Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina is tottering; everyone knows the State Department nudged it a bit; surely, after the crash, the new regime will embrace the nudger. But, in the chaos and anger that will follow the fall, there will be no embrace. The sudden anti-Trujillo policy of the United States and the dramatic condemnation of the Dominican Republic by the Organization of American States (OAS) at San Jose have come too late to avert what State Department planners fear most: an anti-American, Castro-leaning successor to Trujillo. For thirty years, the United States has bolstered the brutal tyranny of El Benefactor. Now that his enemies have him on the run, the United States has jumped to their side. For the final push, this new aid may be accepted and used; but the United States will receive in return only a few cold stares, a polite nod, contempt, smoldering bitterness. However, there are degrees of bitterness and contempt, and the exact character of the post-Trujillo regime will depend on the forces used to overthrow the Generalissimo...

TO AT LEAST one Congressman, a sugar bill posed no problem. The issue was simple, Representative William E. Miller of New York, chairman of the Republican Congressional Committee, told his colleagues: You are either for Castro or against him. Since few praises for Castro have sounded through the chambers of Congress recently, Miller’s analysis, if accurate, meant that a sugar bill could be legislated with ease, speed and clarity. But the analysis was far from accurate, and when Congress, after a twenty-three-hour session during the Fourth of July weekend, finally did bring forth a sugar bill, its haggard members looked neither easy nor speedy nor clear. Their decisions had been shaped and pounded by unceasing and sometimes contradictory pressures — pressures so varied, fascinating and obvious that even a hurried survey of them can reveal some of the realities within our legislative process. The story of the 1960 Sugar Act is a case history in American politics. Despite Miller, the issues turned on much more than an attitude toward the Cuban Premier...

The underdeveloped nations of the world can't terrorize each other in a nuclear arms race. Instead, they pant through a small arms sprint. While the great nations thunder missiles into space, the weak nations gobble up the rifles left behind. There are recent - sometimes dramatic - examples. Last March 4, the French freighter La Coubre exploded in Havana harbor, killing more than 75 seamen, dock workers and firefighters. It was carting 76 tons of Belgian grenades and ammunition to the army of Fidel Castro. Last year, the new African nation of Guinea asked the United States to sell arms to her 2,000-man army. When the United States refused, Guinea bought three shipments of rifles from Communist Czechoslovakia. Conditions are perfect for this dash for little arms: 1. A glut of small arms on the world market. 2. A host of military governments and revolutionaries hungrier for guns than bread. 3. Help from major powers in satisfying that hunger. There is no official estimate of the amount of small arms available on the world market during a year. But some light on the market's vitality is shed by news dispatches and government reports of transactions...