BY NADINE BROZAN | Warren Christopher and George P. Shultz probably never had this problem.
Secretary of State MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT was about to enter a dinner at the Rainbow Room with KING HUSSEIN of Jordan on Monday evening, when a problem with her contact lenses caused her makeup to begin running into her eyes. The King, ever prepared, took a bottle of eye drops out of his pocket and handed them to her.
In fact, Ms. Albright and King Hussein, who had just concluded a substantive discussion on the Middle East, got on so well at the dinner that she suggested in a speech, ”Perhaps we should just send an e-mail to the President rather than go to Washington to meet with him.”
Indeed, the evening—the fifth anniversary celebration of Seeds of Peace, a program that brings together Israeli and Arab teenagers at a summer camp in Maine—went so well that both of them instructed their airplane crews to delay departure for Washington from 9:30 p.m. to midnight.
As 400 guests looked on, including Isaac Stern, Elie Wiesel and Nancy Kissinger, King Hussein and Queen Noor received an award and listened to seven graduates of the program describe their camp friendships and plead for intensified peace efforts.
The beaming King responded: ”I feel a sense of guilt that maybe many of my generation in my region have not arrived at the conclusion that there is no pride to be had in leaving problems the way they are for future generations. We must try to give these young people the peace, the human dignity and the future that we never had.”
JOHN WALLACH, the program’s founder and president, said, ”This is probably the only place in the world where Arabs and Israelis are celebrating peace.”