Algeria: Building an Image

For three hours at U.N. headquarters in Manhattan, looking youthful and a little bewildered under glaring lights, stood Algerian Premier Ahmed ben Bella, 42, shaking hands with 1,500 guests. The reception marking Algeria’s admission to the U.N. was a kind of diplomatic coming-out party for the man who had won control of his embattled country, and the U.S. last week got a chance to take a closer look at the man under the lights.

His image was shadowed by his intention to visit Fidel Castro in Cuba just two days after meeting President Kennedy in the White House. One of his first acts in Manhattan was to call on Cuba’s President Osvaldo Dorticos, who next day denounced the U.S. in violent terms. In a mixture of Latin abrazo and the tradi tional French greeting, both men hugged and kissed each other. Linking the “kissing match” to Communism rather than to courtesy, the New York Mirror cried: “Ben Bella go home and kiss an Arab.”

Unpresumptuous Try. Yet when Ben Bella strode to the rostrum in the U.N.

General Assembly, he had not a word to say about Cuba. In his notably restrained speech, he inevitably put Algeria in the ranks of the Afro-Asian neutralists, ex pressed the expected sympathy with “our brother Arab people in Palestine,” and urged economic help to undeveloped countries, including Algeria.

To reporters, he made an effort to redress his image by stressing that his trip to Cuba was not intended as a “commentary” on U.S. relations with Castro, and added: “On the other hand, without trying to be presumptuous, I hope to contribute something to the lessening of tension between the United States and Cuba.” But Ben Bella’s Foreign Minister later declared that any attempt to overthrow the regime “chosen” by the Cuban people would be a “threat to peace.” In part, the Algerians insisted, their position is based on the fact that during the struggle with France, the U.S. supplied the French army with bombers, guns and ammunition used against the Algerian rebels, while Castro’s Cuba gave hospital care to hundreds of Algerian wounded.

Courageous Stand. On the subject of Algeria’s relations with France, and on the rights of Europeans in Algeria guaranteed under the Evian Agreement, Ben Bella sounded eminently reasonable. In several meetings, he urged France’s Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville to help persuade French industrialists and technicians to aid in reopening Algeria’s closed factories, and to see that French doctors and teachers returned to their posts. Though an avowed socialist, Ben Bella insisted that Algeria would have “a mixed economy including both state and private industry.” In an hour-long chat with Russia’s Andrei Gromyko, Ben Bella did more listening than talking. Gromyko hammered at the “wrong” policies of the U.S., and added that Russia “is ready to give you help in all your needs.” Ben Bella answered: “All assistance will be highly appreciated because we need everything.”

This week Ben Bella boarded President Kennedy’s plane for the flight to Washington and lunch at the White House. “My first thought in seeing Mr. Kennedy,” he said, “is to thank him for his courageous stand as Senator when he called for Algerian independence back in 1957.” Denning his own nonaligned position, Ben Bella said it is based on “the principles of anti-imperialism” and “opposes military alliances. It supports general disarmament and peaceful coexistence.”

Even Ben Bella may not yet be sure to whose tune he will eventually dance. But as of last week, his words were not those of a Communist—or necessarily even a kissin’ cousin of Communism—but of a nationalist faced with possibly insuperable problems at home and little time for intrigue abroad.