The Bridge over the River Kiss

For 90 minutes last week Morocco's King Hassan II and Algerian Premier Ahmed ben Bella sat on the balcony of a seafront villa and pretended they liked each other.

They don't. For nearly two years their troops have been skirmishing intermittently for a 500-mile strip of land which was once considered Moroccan, but was handed over to Algeria by the French when they controlled the area. In addition, militant Socialist Ben Bella regards Hassan as a feudal tyrant and has been training guerrillas and encouraging rebellion against him.

For the time being, however, the King and the Socialist need each other. To head off a threatened boycott of moderate leaders that could ruin next month's Afro-Asian Summit Conference in Algiers, Ben Bella badly needs to change his image as an agent of subversion and revolution. How better to do so than by appearing friendly to his good neighbor Hassan, who is influential among the moderates of both

Africa and the Arab world? The King, for his part, has become increasingly concerned over demonstrations and student riots at home. How better to win leftist hearts than by swearing eternal friendship to Ben Bella?

The meeting took place in the Moroccan resort town of Saidia, which lies just across the River Kiss from Algeria. Under such circumstances, it could hardly have failed. A mellow joint communique announced that the two old pals had discussed Algerian-Moroccan relations and had arrived at "identical views." To commemorate their new-found fraternity, in fact, they decided to build a bridge across the Kiss. Its name will be Encounter Bridge.

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