CENTO: The Baghdad-less Pact

As the limousines rolled up, one after another, the honor guard posted before Washington’s vast, columned Interdepartmental Auditorium repeatedly sprang to attention. Inside the hushed hall a loudspeaker announced each arrival: Premier Manouchehr Eghbal of Iran, Premier Adnan Menderes of Turkey, Foreign Minister Manzur Qadir of Pakistan, British Ambassador to the U.S. Sir Harold Caccia. With all due pomp, the U.S. last week was playing host to the semiannual Ministerial Council of CENTO, the Baghdad-less Baghdad Pact.

As it often does, pomp concealed a certain lack of substance. When revolutionary Iraq walked out of the Baghdad Pact last March, the remaining members along the strategic Northern Tier of the Middle East—Turkey, Iran and Pakistan —were badly shaken. To reassure them, the U.S. hastily signed bilateral defense treaties with each. (Unlike Britain, which is a full partner, the U.S. has consistently refused formal membership in the pact for fear of stirring up new resentment in India, Israel and most of the Arab states.) With this encouragement, the pact members moved their headquarters from Baghdad to Ankara, and rustled up a new name: the Central Treaty Organization.

A Matter of Muscle. But even in its new guise, the pact retained many of its old weaknesses. Though it has to its credit the improvement of transport and communications lines between its Middle Eastern members, CENTO still has no unified military command; the real muscle guarding the Northern Tier is supplied by the bilateral U.S. treaties. And CENTO still has a soft spot in Iran, where Russian pressure alternates between threats and blandishments in an effort to force Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi into the neutralist path.

At the Washington meeting, Pakistan’s M.O.A. Baig, CENTO’s secretary-general, insisted: “Iran is not, repeat not, in a shaky position.” But CENTO and the U.S. were sufficiently concerned so that late in the week Dwight Eisenhower issued an unusual statement stressing “the gravity with which the U.S. would view a threat to the territorial integrity or political independence of Iran.”

Limited Underwriter. In what has become something close to a CENTO ritual, Pakistan’s Qadir at last week’s session urged the U.S. to abandon the fiction that it is not a full member of the pact, and Iran’s Eghbal outspokenly demanded more U.S. and British aid. But the U.S. had already pumped $470 million into CENTO’s three Middle Eastern members in fiscal 1959. “Clearly, the U.S. cannot underwrite all CENTO economic projects,” said Secretary of State Christian Herter. Imperfect as CENTO may be, however, the U.S. could not abandon it without shaking the free world’s strategic position in the Middle East, and Herter also made it plain that he was aware of that. Said he: “CENTO will continue to enjoy strong U.S. support.”