As the second London conference on the Suez crisis convened last week in the chandeliered conference room of London's Lancaster House, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles faced a roomful of uneasy men with varying ideas but a common interest. Their interest was to find, through diplomacy rather than war, the way to remove the Suez from the sole control of Egypt's Nasser. The immediate objective was to equip that common interest with a workable bargaining instrument fashioned from the Anglo-American plan for a canal users' association.
As first announced by Britain's Sir Anthony Eden and elaborated by Dulles, the plan had been a challenge backed by the threat of detours around the canal, a sea lift of Western Hemisphere oil, and probably a complaint to the U.N. But, from the moment of his arrival in London, Dulles found only the British and French enthusiastic for this extreme potential of the users' idea—and they were bothered by the realization that the most that they could expect from the U.S. to defray the heavy cost of detour would be loans to pay for U.S. oil imports, not gifts. Furthermore, Nasser was so far proving disconcertingly able to run the canal by himself. As long as the canal remained open, the smaller nations were unwilling to shoulder the extra cost of sending their ships around the cape. Scandinavia, West Germany and Italy were unhappy at the thought of jeopardizing their trade with the Arab world. Most argued that a boycott would cost them more than it would cost Nasser.
The users' idea in its most extreme concept—as a huge Western economic club to beat down Nasser—had its flaws for John Foster Dulles as well. For the U.S. aim had to be not only to protect its vital interests and those of its Western allies in the Suez and Middle East, but also to negotiate in a manner that did not draw a permanent cleavage between the Western world and the Arab and Asian countries.
So out of these second thoughts, objections and reservations, the diplomats at Lancaster House tried to fashion a single purpose.
What to Seek. Dulles put forward the users' association plan in the most deliberately tentative terms, his speech studded with phrases such as "I suppose," "I would think," "I suggest." "What is it that we seek?" he asked. "It is nothing hostile to or prejudicial to Egypt" but "on a provisional, de facto practical operating basis, a measure of cooperation with Egypt." The association would hire pilots, collect and pay out tolls and fees. Membership, he said, "would not involve the assumption by any member of any obligation," though naturally "it would be hoped" members would voluntarily cooperate.