Tito Felix
The President of Yugoslavia's visit last week to the King and Queen of Greece was a success. It symbolised not merely Tito's final embrace of the West and the West's embrace of Tito, but a new stage in the growth of a collective security system across the south of the Soviet Empire from Belgrade to Karachi. Only a month ago, Pakistan took the westward plunge and signed a defence pact with Turkey; now, it is announced from Athens, Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia are to convert their treaty of friendship into a military alliance. Exactly what this entails is left temporarily to the imagination; there will presumably be undertakings about mutual assistance in the-event of an attack under- certain circumstances against one of the three; there is also bound to be a formalisation of the joint military planning which has been in embryo for some me; there is, according to the comrhuniqu6, to be a tripartite onsultative assembly. In the meantime the project has its nags, the most prominent of which is the attitude of Italy. n principle, there is nothing to be said for the ludicrous esistance put up by Rome. It is awkward but possibly ue when Israel argues that to arm Iraq against Russia is to Increase the Arab threat to Israel. It is almost certainly untrue but is at least comprehensible when Mr. Nehru argues that to arm Pakistan against Russia is to increase the threat to ndian interests in Kashmir. It is neither true nor comprehen- '131e, except in the comic opera terms in which Italian foreign olicy is at present cast, to argue that a Balkan military alliance ould threaten Italian interests in any respect. Since the Trieste negotiations are now entering the decisive stage when the compromise worked out with Yugoslavia is being put to the Italians, it would be better if they could be successfully completed before the question of a Balkan alliance comes to the point of conclusion. But there must be a limit to the extent that the West can let themselves be blackmailed and heir strategy distorted by the weakness of the present (or any oreseeable) Italian government.
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