The Wheeler-Dealers

Just as Soviet Power Station. Minister Ignaty Novikov was all set to fly home after attending ground-breaking ceremonies for President Nasser's Aswan Dam, an urgent cable arrived from the boss. Putting off his departure, Novikov rushed to Nasser's palace with Premier Nikita Khrushchev's message: "The government of the Soviet Union hereby expresses its readiness to join in the construction of the second stage of the Aswan High Dam on the same terms as agreed for the first." Hours later, Nasser sent his "greatly overjoyed" acceptance.

Five years after arranging the historic guns-for-cotton deal that first brought them into Egypt, the Russians wound up undertaking to supply all the foreign money, material and advice to build the Middle East's greatest development project. After first luring President Eisenhower and West Germany's Ludwig Erhard into discussing help for Aswan's second stage, Nasser's aides now declared that it had been "inevitable" that the Russians should get the contract. They added that the Russians planned to merge the two stages of the billion-dollar job, thereby cutting construction time from ten to seven years. The Russians also promised to lend $258 million at 2 1/2% interest. As West Germany's Erhard, getting there too late, arrived in Egypt this week, the jubilant Egyptians said that there were plenty of other projects in the U.A.R. for the West to help with if it wants to.

Moscow's second big business deal of the week was more surprising to those who think that the Communists always put Marxist philosophy above business opportunity. Russia agreed to sell diamonds found in Russia through the De Beers Consolidated Mines, the powerful South African monopoly that Moscow has denounced in the past for "mercilessly exploiting its workers and artificially holding down production and sales to force up prices and profits."

Moscow recently announced a discovery of diamond deposits in north central Siberia large enough to boost its output thirteenfold by 1965. Though the Siberian deposits seem to be gem stones, and the Communists do not want their women to think that diamonds are a girl's best friend, De Beers feared that the Russians might move into the world market and knock prices down. Quality industrial diamonds is what the Soviets want. Hence the deal: gems for De Beers, which can market them at best prices in the luxury markets of the West, and an assured supply of industrial diamonds for the Soviet Union, which has sometimes had to make up its shortage by buying industrial stones smuggled out of West Africa.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.