Traps & Transfers

In Cairo last week three of the East's new rulers gathered to take advantage of the defeat of the British in Jordan.

Cairo newspapers headily called their session (held in Farouk's old palace) an Arabic "parley at the summit." It was quite a summit. Egypt's 38-year-old Dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, flush with achievement, had called the meeting and brought it new Middle East prestige: with his purchase of Communist arms and his inflammatory broadcasts to neighboring states, he had done as much as any man to seize opportunity on the troubled Mediterranean rim. As a show of his strength, he sent Soviet-made MIG fighters to escort Saudi Arabia's King Saud on his flight across the Red Sea.

With Syria's President Shukri el Ku-watly, Nasser and Saud sat down to survey the North African bloodshed and Levantine disorder that their intrigue and gold had helped to promote. Outside, in the Cairo streets, the mobs reckoned on only one advantage from their strengthened position: When the "summit" leaders went to pray at Cairo's 1,000-year-old Alazhar mosque, 3,000 Moslems shouted: "Israel must be annihilated."

But the three leaders were not yet to have their way in Jordan. The 20-year-old King Hussein had become, overnight, a national hero by expelling Glubb. But when the three potentates in Cairo invited Hussein to accept their financial aid in place of the $25 million annual subsidy Britain has been paying Jordan, Hussein declined to give up his treaty and his financial ties with London. Why should he trade the dependability of the British Exchequer for bondage to the Saudi royal family, blood enemies of his Hashemite clan? He seemed genuinely shocked by the uproar in Britain over the removal of Glubb, and sent personal word to Anthony Eden asking him to countermand the order withdrawing 15 of the Arab Legion's remaining British officers.

Shaken Hero. Thus the young King sidestepped one trap, but a hectic trip through his country reminded him of another. Crossing the River Jordan, the King was almost hysterically received by his ex-Palestinian subjects. Throngs of refugees, who have been waiting ever since the 1949 armistice for a new war to regain their lost possessions, crowded round his

Cadillac and rocked it as if it were a toy, yelling: "Long live Hussein, our savior!" and "Long live the man who will lead us against Israel!" At Damiya police had to rescue him from his shrieking worshipers, who whirled him from his car and started to carry him off. Arriving at the ancient hill town of Nablus, where Jesus once talked by the well with the adulterous woman of Samaria, the King said what the audience had come to hear: "We shall regain what was lost of our fatherland, with God's help."

As the young King was painfully learning, the mob is a member without portfolio in any Jordanian government today.

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