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At his Washington press conference last week, President Carter described the new Israeli-Egyptian contacts as "a historic breakthrough" toward peace and said the U.S. would send a representative —Assistant Secretary of State Alfred Atherton—to Sadat's Cairo summit. The tone of Carter's endorsement suggested to some that he was seeking to counter press criticism that Washington, now in the unaccustomed position of being a bystander to Middle Eastern events rather than the architect of them, was discouraging rather than helping Sadat's peace initiative.
In fact, the U.S. has been at least half a step behind these events, and the Administration's response to them has been confused. For example, Sadat told U.S. Ambassador in Cairo Hermann Eilts in a general way about his plans for a pre-Geneva conference to help clear up procedural problems. Eilts urgently passed the message to Washington. But before Carter and his policy advisers had a chance to assess the ploy and reply, Eilts learned that Sadat was planning to propose such a conference in a speech to Egypt's national assembly. A message was dispatched to Egypt asking Sadat to hold off announcing the summit until the U.S. could sound out other Arab states and the Soviet Union. The request either arrived too late or was ignored by Sadat.
Beyond that, reports TIME Correspondent Christopher Ogden, there was a definite split between the White House and the State Department on how to respond to the rapidly changing situation. White House advisers were enthusiastic, recognizing that Sadat had cracked through a psychological barrier to Geneva. The diplomatic professionals at Foggy Bottom, reflecting Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's innate caution, feared that Sadat's moves might alienate not only the Syrians but the Saudis as well. State was also concerned about a negative reaction from Moscow. As soon as it became clear that neither the other Arabs nor the Soviets were going to Cairo, Carter announced that the U.S. would attend—but only after the President had asked Sadat to delay his summit until mid-December. In the meantime, U.S. diplomats will be trying to lobby the Arab moderates—primarily Hussein and Lebanese President Elias Sarkis—to send representatives to Cairo.
The attitude of Syria's Assad will have much to do with what happens next. He willingly attended the Tripoli summit, which was held in the lavish Arabian Nights-style People's Hall that once served as the Libyan capital's royal palace. Assad was under strong pressure to become a member of an enlarged rejection front implacably hostile to any negotiations with Israel. Expectations were that he would, in the end, refuse the overtures. For one thing", the ideological gap between Iraq and Syria, which are governed by rival branches of the socialist Baath Party, is as deep as the one between Moscow and Peking. For another, most Middle East experts believe that Assad wants a peace settlement almost as much as Sadat does and cannot afford to burn too many bridges to Egypt.