National Affairs: Salute to Saud

Working out its new policy for the Middle East, the U.S. has sighted on Saudi Arabia’s King Saud as a Middle East ruler with a close grip on reality. How close the grip and how important the ally was intimated when President Eisenhower announced that in welcoming Saud to Washington this week for a three-day state visit, he would depart from his long-standing custom. Instead of greeting the King on the White House steps as he has done in the past with other chiefs of state, Ike will go to Washington’s National Airport, welcome Saud at the terminal when Ike’s own Columbine III sets down after flying the King and his party from New York. Also scheduled to greet Saud at the airport: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur W. Radford, and District of Columbia officials with a key to the city.