MIDDLE EAST Journey to Jedda

President Gamal Abdel Nasser has for months sought an end to the bloody, three-year-old civil war in Yemen that would not carry with it the stigma of humiliating defeat for Egypt. An expeditionary force of some 50,000 Egyptian troops was not able to do the job. Neither was a series of palavers between delegates of the unstable republican regime of Abdullah Sallal and those of the royalist tribesmen fighting to restore Yemen's deposed Imam Badr.

Nasser finally decided to step in personally, last week swallowed his pride and journeyed to Jedda for face-to-face talks with Saudi Arabia's King Feisal. Feisal has been backing the royalists with money and munitions, just as Nasser has been backing the republicans, so if a swift solution is possible they should be the men to find it. In Cairo, where Egyptians are weary of a distant war that costs $1,000,000 a day in addition to thousands of casualties, there was a gush of exultation. The daily Al Akhbar printed a cartoon showing Nasser riding a white dove to his meeting with Feisal in Jedda.

Arab diplomats thought an agreement acceptable to both sides might include 1) withdrawal of Egyptian troops within six months, 2) a transitional government manned by a coalition of republicans and royalists, and 3) a promise of national elections. Nasser seemed ready to drop his long-insisted-upon title of the "Republic of Yemen" in favor of the "Islamic State of Yemen." But a major obstacle was Nasser's insistence that Imam Badr and his immediate family be banished in order to speed a reconciliation of the Yemeni factions. Yemen's royalists would hardly go along with that, though they might well agree to convert the Imamate into a purely religious institution without political power during the transition period leading up to elections.

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