The Incurable Arsonist

Bonfires of hate burned menacingly across the Middle East last week, and the man with the matches was that incurable arsonist, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser. In Aden, grenade-tossing pro-Nasser terrorists roamed virtually out of control through the British colony's streets. To the north in Yemen, a regime that owes its authority to an Egyptian occupation army, acting on Nasser's counsel, all but dared the U.S. to break off relations with it.* Even as far away as Kenya, Nasser's fine hand was evident as the Kenyan army discovered Egyptian land mines planted in dusty roads. Yet Nasser had his own version of what was going on. In a major speech in Cairo, he declared that "the war against us is a big war led by America."

Nasser spared few of his Arab brothers his scorn. He attacked King Feisal of Saudi Arabia as an "Anglo-American agent" who is "like a snake seeking to bite." He dismissed King Hussein of Jordan as "an employee of the CIA." Classifying his foes under the Communist label of "imperialistic stooges," he also called President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia and the Shah of Iran "only the tools of America." He accused members of the federal government of Aden of being "traitors and agents" and called upon them to resign and do penance. Traveling further afield, he claimed that West Germany, which he does not recognize, is "subjected to America." Then he sat down with the visiting Foreign Minister of Communist East Germany, Otto Winzer, to discuss opening diplomatic relations with that country.

Ironic Discovery. In his fight to win absolute control over the Arab world and crush such moderates as Feisal and Hussein, Nasser badly needs a scapegoat. For the past two months, he has been preparing a diplomatic confrontation with the U.S., which fits that bill nicely. He put his plan into action when the Egyptian economy, which had been nearly bankrupted by his foreign adventures, was unexpectedly given a boost by the discovery of considerable oil deposits in the Gulf of Suez and in the western desert. They will bring Nasser $90 million this year and some $150 million a year by 1970. Ironically, the oil was discovered by U.S. oil companies and will be recovered by them.

Thus encouraged, Nasser felt strong enough to make another play to extend his interests across the Saudi Arabian peninsula, perhaps hoping to add the oil-rich sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf to his coffers. His boardinghouse reach even stretches southward across the Gulf of Aden, where he is aiding Somali terrorists who lay claim to one-fourth of the northern territory of Jomo Kenyatta's Kenya. The Kenyan government, incensed by evidences of Egyptian aid to the rebels, called on Nasser to cease supplying them and said that it is ready to go to war with Somalia unless the border conflict ceases.

Reluctant Plea. Nasser disavows any intention of sending troops into Aden when the British grant that colony independence next year. But the terrorist organizations that he supports have made it all but impossible for Britain to make an orderly withdrawal from either Aden or the larger South Arabian Federation, of which it is a part. They have refused to take part in any coalition with the British-backed government. Instead, the Nasserite Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) is training an army of more than 5,000 men in nearby Yemen to take over when the British leave. Even as the British started evacuating the first of their 8,000 dependents last week, Arab extremists were threatening harm to their women and children. Those threats so far were just that, but elsewhere a total of 20 Arabs was killed during the week, seven of them children whose school bus blew up when it rolled over an anti-tank mine planted in the road. Several British soldiers were among nearly 100 persons who have been killed so far this year in Aden.

To blunt Nasser's thrust, King Hussein of Jordan went to Teheran last week for talks with the Shah of Iran. This week King Feisal, the leader of the more moderate Arab regimes, goes to London to make a plea for more arms aid. "We are obliged, however reluctantly, to defend ourselves," says Feisal, whose country is also infiltrated with pro-Nasser terrorists and has been bombed by Egyptian planes. The British are helping Feisal strengthen his army and build an air defense system. In London, he is expected to ask the British to refrain for the moment from giving arms aid to royalist guerrillas in Yemen so that the latter do not incite a show down with Egypt and Nasser's puppet in Yemen, Abdullah Sallal, before Saudi Arabia is ready to fight.

* The U.S. has evacuated 130 Americans from Yemen because of harassment of its AID mission by the republican regime of Abdullah Sallal. Two AID officials, Stephen Liapis, 33, and Harold Hartman, 36, have been jailed on trumped-up charges that they were caught attempting to blow up an ammunition dump with a bazooka. The U.S. has protested vigorously, but has hesitated to break relations lest it have to abandon Liapis and Hartman and give up its diplomatic listening posts in Yemen.

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