Neutrals: Rites of Belgrade

Seldom had Belgrade seen more bustle and toil. Wrecking crews felled whole rows of shabby old tenements as if scything corn. Gangs labored round the clock to transform gaping foundations into spruce little parks. Everywhere, the police rounded up known drunks, idlers and beggars and sent them off to the countryside for the duration of the Conference of Unaligned Nations.

President Tito was sparing nothing to provide a tidy setting for his big show, scheduled to open this week, starring at least 16 neutralist heads of state, 7 Premiers and a chorus of other assorted high dignitaries. It was all Tito’s idea, conceived during a tour of new African nations last spring, approved by the U.A.R.’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, and sanctified by Indonesia’s Sukarno. India’s Jawaharlal Nehru also gave his blessing, though at first he was afraid that a meeting of so many unaligned nations might be misinterpreted as the formation of a “third bloc.” Said he: “Cooperation between countries is one thing, but political and other association for the purpose of forming a third bloc is quite another.” Eventually, Nehru was convinced that no blocs would be built at Belgrade.

Touchy Antagonists. Although the eligibility of the conference’s main sponsors was never in doubt, a workable definition of unalignment was needed before other invitations could be sent. A 21-nation conference met in Cairo and pondered the problem for twelve days. Finally, the essential qualifications were chosen: 1) nonparticipation in military alliances with great powers, 2) refusal to “voluntarily” grant military bases to foreign powers, and 3) “active support” of liberation and independence movements.

The definition proved vague enough to permit some touchy antagonists to get invitations. Of the 24 nations so far coming to Belgrade,* Ethiopia and Somalia have a longstanding border dispute that occasionally erupts into bloody frontier incidents. At one stage of the Congo crisis, Yugoslavia, the U.A.R., Guinea and Mali split with India, Ethiopia and other neutralist countries over which Congolese government to recognize. More importantly, the nations meeting at Belgrade habitually split into two loose groupings—one composed of actively anti-Western African nations (including the Algerian rebel F.L.N.), the other predominantly Asian, led by India, and more moderate in its politics.

Power of the Weak. Thanks to such political divisions, the official conference agenda is cautiously uncomplicated and uncontroversial: “exchange of views on the international situation” and “strengthening peace and security.” Western experts guess that if the official agenda is observed, the West may expect nothing more than one more verbal flogging for “imperialism” and colonialism, along with exhortations for everyone, especially the West, to disarm completely—and, of course, to give aid generously. Hopes for any Afro-Asian condemnation of Soviet imperialism in Eastern Europe are relatively slim. Nehru, for one, tends to pass over irritating disputes as a sort of natural legacy of “the continent of hate.”

Washington is anxious to see how seriously the Berlin crisis affects the conference. Nehru’s temporary dismissal of the whole Western case on Berlin was both irritating and sobering. Tito not long ago declared himself in accord with Russia “on the majority of important questions.” (Yugoslavia was the first nation outside the East bloc to extend formal diplomatic recognition to Communist East Germany.)

As the Berlin crisis deepens, the gathering of unaligned nations in Belgrade this week may make a timely point by underscoring the voting power that the small and the weak now hold in the U.N. Conceivably, the Berlin question may be brought up before the General Assembly, where the voices and the votes of the unaligned would weigh heavily.

* Burma, Ceylon, Ghana, Guinea, Ethiopia, Sudan, India, Indonesia, Yemen, Cambodia, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Arab Republic, Lebanon, Algerian Provisional Government (F.L.N.), Tunisia, Cyprus, Afghanistan, Cuba, Iraq, Yugoslavia; observer nations: Brazil, Bolivia. Possible participant: Cyrille Adoula of the Congo.