Split Among the Arabs

Cairo's press trumpeted that the meeting was to be "the turning point in the history of the Arab world." But King Saud had lingered on in Libya, and his plane touched down at Cairo's airfield a negligent six hours late. The Convair's automatic steps failed to function, and Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser had to wait an awkward several moments more before Saud stepped down into his welcoming embrace.

The once automatic alignment of Saud and Nasser was in no better working order than the automatic steps. All the way back from his warming visit to President Dwight Eisenhower, Saud had been proclaiming his faith in Ike. "I am convinced that the future of the Arab world must be founded on its friendship with America," he said. Last week, as Nasser, Syria's President Shukri el Kuwatly and Jordan's young King Hussein gathered in Cairo to hear his report, Saud was a frank advocate of the U.S. position, said an informed Egyptian. "Saud spoke repeatedly of the Eisenhower era. He said it was a great new chance for the Arab cause."

Two Against Two. Saud reportedly assured his fellow Arabs that Ike had given his personal word that the Israelis would be required to withdraw without conditions, and that U.S. aid under the Eisenhower Doctrine would be unconditional. Saud tried hard to get agreement on a paragraph condemning Communist infiltration in the Middle East and to get Nasser to endorse the Eisenhower plan. In turn, Saud beat down Syrian Kuwatly's attempt to express appreciation of Russian help to the Arab cause, and refused Nasser's plea for support of his plan to block clearance of the Suez Canal as long as the Israelis failed to withdraw. "If you block the canal, you don't hurt the Israelis, but you do hurt your friends," said Saud, who has been losing 30% of his oil revenues because of the Suez blockage. In these arguments, Jordan's Hussein, a Hashemite and by old tradition a blood enemy of the Sauds. backed King Saud.

For his guests, Nasser put on a pointed display of his 4th Armored Division--four serried ranks of Russian tanks, self-propelled artillery, tank destroyers and personnel carriers 75 abreast, over which flew a flight of 15 Ilyushin jet bombers and ten MIGs. "You see, we still do have an army," said one Egyptian major. But after 17 hours of talk, including a private talk between Nasser and Saud that lasted until 3 one morning, the conference dissolved in a mist of platitudes.

Standoff. The meeting had been expected to produce a definitive declaration on the Eisenhower Doctrine by what the kept Cairo press likes to call the "free Arabs"--as opposed to the "kept Arabs" like the Iraqis, who belong to Western pacts. It did not. Nasser refused to accept the Eisenhower Doctrine on the plea that it had not yet been fully explained. Saud refused to condemn it. Result: no mention of the doctrine at all, except an oblique insistence that "the defense of the Arab world should emanate from the Arab nation."

Plainly, Saud was still wary of Nasser's power over the Arab masses, and did not want a break with him. But the conference might prove to be a turning point in a sense the Cairo press did not intend, for it showed that in the Arab world Nasser could count fully on only one other supporter, Communist-infiltrated Syria.

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