Two for Trouble

Panama's Foreign Minister Miguel Moreno stood on the banks of Egypt's Suez Canal one day last week and gazed with admiration so undisguised that it was almost a declaration of policy. Later, before a formal call on Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Moreno put his thoughts into words: "The ties between Panama and the United Arab Republic are ancient. You have the Suez Canal, and we have the Panama Canal.'' In Panama City, visitors to the Cuban embassy could pick up a copy of the slick magazine, INRA, and read the same thought in words more to the point: "The Panama Canal Zone constitutes ... a plunder of Panama." From both Cairo and Havana last week the attack was on, and in both cases the target was the same: the U.S. Panama Canal Zone.

Loaded Cocktails. Leading the campaign on the spot is the United Arab Republic's Minister Mohamed El Tabei, 44. a round-shouldered little man with darting eyes. An army judge advocate who hitched himself to Nasser's star, Tabei turned up a year ago to open the U.A.R.'s first fulltime diplomatic outpost in Panama. Despite the fact that commercial relations between the U.A.R. and Panama are so minuscule that they are not even listed in world trade reports, he brought three staffers from Cairo, hired a dozen more Panamanians once he arrived.

Tabei has not been idle. Each month the legation mails out a fat, Spanish-language bulletin full of success stories about Nasser's operation of Suez, regularly lends a documentary film on the glories of the new Egypt. Tabei recently donated a shelf of Egyptian books to the University of Panama, has also announced four scholarships for Panamanians to study in Cairo. Most important, Tabei has turned into the diplomatic set's host with the most, glorifying Egypt's canal-nationalizing over endless cocktails and dinners. A favorite guest: Aquilino Boyd, who as foreign minister in 1958 sent his deputy to Egypt to look over operation of the seized Suez Canal.

Have a Canal. Nationalist Boyd is also a frequent guest at parties thrown by Cuban Ambassador Jose Antonio Cabrera Vila, but the approach to Panama that Cabrera represents is somewhat less subtle than Tabei's. Last November, before the second invasion of the Canal Zone by flag-planting rioters, a reporter-photographer team from INRA harangued the Chiriqui province students who led the riots carrying a giant-sized portrait of Fidel Castro.

In press interviews Cabrera has pledged Cuba's support for any move Panama might make against the Zone; at public functions he passes out cigars in wrappers bearing the message, "From the people of Cuba to their brothers, the people of Panama.''

Although the U.A.R. legation and the Cuban embassy are in the same block on the same street, Tabei and Cabrera are never seen talking privately, give no evidence that they coordinate a common campaign to stir up Panama's anti-U.S. nationalists. But last week Nasser's Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Zulficar Sabri was a guest of honor in Fidel Castro's Cuba. A sure topic for talk: Panama and the U.S. Canal Zone.

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