Sunrise in Cairo

"Within the Arab world." said Egypt's Strongman Nasser in 1953, "there is a role wandering aimlessly in search of a hero." Last week President Nasser made his biggest bid yet for the role of Arabism's hero. Meeting simultaneously in Cairo and Damascus, the Egyptian and Syrian Parliaments unanimously adopted his terms for immediate union and nominated him as sole candidate for President of the United Arab Republic.

''In the lives of nations," cried Nasser in a burst of emotional oratory, "there are generations ordained and solely chosen by destiny to witness decisive turning points in the history of mankind. This generation of Egyptians is one of those generations ordained by fate to live great moments of transition, moments that are like the pageant of the sunrise. We have witnessed the dawn of our independence, the dawn of our freedom, the rebirth of our pride and dignity, of our strength, of our hopes for a happy society. And today we live a new and glorious dawn, for the dawn of our unity is here at last."

"Long live Gamal, founder of Arab union!" roared the Cairo Deputies of the first leader to make a start toward the ancient dream of Arab brotherhood since Saladin united his Saracen hosts against the Crusaders in 1174. In Syria's Damascus the celebration was wilder. Bedouins whirled through the Arab sword dance. Soviet-made helicopters swooped overhead, 50,000 citizens paraded with their "Arab Unity" banners past the Parliament. Dark-suited legislators, who had just voted themselves and aging President Kuwatly out of jobs, produced guns from somewhere and blazed away into the sky in celebration.

Call It Democracy. Nasser and Kuwatly announced that the new state would be ratified next week by a plebiscite in which its 24 million Egyptian and 4 million Syrian citizens are also expected to name Nasser their chief. The President will appoint both Cabinet and Parliament, plus "executive councils" for each of the union's two "regions."

Such plans only confirmed Middle East speculation that Syrian nationalists had thought up the merger in their anxiety to head off a Communist drive for control of their country, and had accepted virtual annexation by Egypt as the only way out. Said Iraq's irascible old Nuri asSaid: "You don't have union when one of the countries is erased." Nasser's terms--pow er to impose a single party and choose its leader, to extirpate other parties--were clearly designed to allow Nasser to crack down on Syrian Communists as hard as he has on his own. Already Nasser's house-cleaning was under way. Syria's Communist Party Chief Khaled Bakdash took one look at the proposed constitution and left by plane with his family for Moscow. Significantly, Moscow, which has clarioned all available news of its Egyptian and Syrian friends for months, has had nothing to say about the Egypt-Syria merger.

Name It Neutralism. In invoking the cherished Arab unity dream to curb Communist penetration of the Syrian regime, Nasser may have done the West a useful service, however inadvertently. But the move had made him neither a better--nor a worse--prospect in the West's future plans. Little Yemen, the only other Middie East country to receive aid from Russia, last week sent Crown Prince El Badr to Cairo to discuss some sort of federal relationship with the new state. But Nasser had made his vaunted "positive neutrality" look more substantial than before, had demonstrated that he can kick the Communists in the shins along with the West.

Nasser faces his first challenge outside his own country. As the champion of Arab unity, he must make his strange experiment succeed. His problem will be to show that relatively prosperous Syria can go on prospering in its new union with poverty-stricken Egypt. Despite Nasser's purge of Communists, the Russians will find it hard to withdraw the aid they have pledged, in view of their sanctimonious insistence that Russian aid is given without strings. But if Nasser's experiment should falter, he may be able to base a new plea to the West on the claim that he rid Syria of Communists.

Well aware that he needs time, Nasser has taken care not to make the new union seem an aggressive instrument. He ordered his press and radio to stop attacking Jordan's King Hussein. Nasser also passed word to Lebanon's Arab nationalist opposition to soft-pedal their demands to join the merger now.

Watch & Wait. But Nasser has blown a little flame into the smoldering dream of Arab union. Last week Jordan's Palestinian refugees, who make up two-thirds of King Hussein's troubled citizenry, were already agitating for merger with the new republic, and Hussein conferred worriedly with advisers, invited his cousin, Iraq's King Feisal, to discuss a union of their own. Feisal hastily accepted after hundreds of Iraqi deputies, ex-ministers and other dignitaries cabled congratulations to Cairo and Damascus. Saudi Arabia's King Saud, well aware that Egypt has long agitated among his people against his autocratic rule, sent an emissary to Yemen to talk the Imam out of federating with the new republic. Warily, the Middle East watched and waited.

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