Clear the Canal

A Dutch diver named Flip Gwoud suited up aboard a Danish launch at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal. Then he slid over the side to mark the sunken wreck of the Egyptian frigate Abikir. Minutes later the Danish tug Protector chugged past to start work on a wrecked dredger blockading passage eight miles farther north. Thus at last the U.N. salvage fleet began its huge job of clearing the 40 wrecks that block the Suez Canal.

Under leadership of the U.S.'s Lieut. General (ret.) Raymond A. Wheeler, former Panama Canal engineer, some 23 ships of six nations stood in to attack the blockage in three task forces--one clearing smaller wrecks around Port Said, two others working from opposite ends of the canal to join at Ismailia in clearing the cement-laden hulk of the Egyptian LST Akka, by far the toughest single salvage job. The U.N. fleet, said General Wheeler, will be built up to 30 vessels and will operate under a consortium of experienced Dutch and Danish firms. If all goes according to plan, said Wheeler, the canal should be open in May for the biggest ships it can take.

General Wheeler put his team together in an atmosphere of popular confusion and political outcry that sorely tested even his engineer's vocational optimism. The British had taken exception to his statements that as a U.N. official he was only Nasser's guest in Egypt, and had accused him of letting the Egyptians delay the clearance job. The Egyptians had displayed all the sensitivities of the injured and assaulted, had insisted on accepting the benefactions of their U.N. rescuers on their own terms.

Already Nasser seemed to be back at his old trick of playing off East against West. As if to flaunt in Western faces the possible consequences of calling him to account, Nasser gave nine Soviet correspondents a two-hour interview in which he thanked the Russians for sending him military aid "without conditions" and for offering "volunteers" to fight the Suez invaders. Said Nasser: "I wish for this friendship to grow and develop in strength." A Nasser aide announced that the Anglo-French attack on Suez had freed Egypt from its commitment to negotiate for nonpolitical operation of the canal in accordance with the U.N.'s "six principles." Cairo later explained that it would still negotiate on the matter with the U.N., was only excluding direct negotiations with France and Britain. But it raised the question whether Nasser was again acting big for his breeches.

As Nasser took back Port Said last week, the battered city was permitted a short spasm of celebration. As his troops and tanks moved in, the snipers that the inflammatory Cairo press had played up as second Stalingraders fired their rifles in the air. Then they rushed to pull down the 57-ft. statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps, French-born father of the Suez Canal. With police cordoning the crowd, three successive charges of dynamite toppled the statue in a shower of bronze splinters. Boys fired at the great figure as it fell, then trampled the wreckage, shouting: "Down with Britain and France."

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