Spies & Ties

Nasser's Egypt, restive under the pressures it was subjected to, decided to apply a few pressures of its own. Cairo's press blossomed out with stories of a pan-Arab underground pledged to blow up Western oil installations in the Middle East if Egypt should be attacked, and told of volunteers reportedly arriving from Uganda and French Equatorial Africa to fight for Nasser. But the week's biggest sensation was a front-page spy plot with real-life British villains.

Everybody's Secrets. One day last week at teatime, Nasser's government rounded up two Britons and half a dozen Egyptians. Shortly thereafter, the Egyptian information chief announced that the two Englishmen--James Swinburn, 51, of the British-owned Arab News Agency and Charles Pittuck, 47, of the Marconi Radio & Telegraph Co. had made a "complete confession." According to the government spokesman, Swinburn headed "a dangerous espionage ring which worked for British intelligence and supplied it with information about the Egyptian armed forces." Swinburn's cook had told all, and Swinburn had been arrested just as he was about to flee the country (actually, Swinburn was about to go to London to be with his wife while she underwent surgery for cancer).

Swinburn's "ring," said the government spokesman, had reported to two British embassy first secretaries--John G. Gove and James B. Flux. The diplomats were given 72 hours to leave the country. (The British Foreign Office promptly declared that two officials of parallel status in Egypt's London embassy were persona non grata.)

Nasser himself decided that the trial should be held in public and in a civil court. When advisers protested that military secrets might be compromised by a public trial, Nasser snapped: "I don't care about military secrets. I want the public to know about everything." The prosecutor said at once that he would demand the death penalty for the Britons.

The Squeeze. Nasser was also kept busy fending off the fine web that the British and French have begun to weave around his economy. The most immediately threatening web was that binding key Suez Canal technicians to the old Frenchrun company. After Nasser said yes to Menzies, the French government announced that the company would not pull out its foreign pilots until the talks were over. "But," added a Foreign Ministry spokesman, "we cannot expect them to stay indefinitely."

For Nasser the squeeze caused by the tying up of Egypt's sterling accounts is already starting to hurt. Last week Saudi Arabia eased things a bit by putting up $10 million for Egypt's use against an equivalent sum in Egyptian pounds, and Nasser and his Finance Minister talked long with Russian Ambassador Kiselev about more help from the Soviet bloc. The No. i problem: paying for the 600,000 tons of wheat Egypt must import in the next nine months. Buying it as usual on the world market would use up $47 million, or half of all Egypt's unblocked dollar assets. Last week, for a starter, the government arranged to buy 100,000 tons of Syrian wheat with Egyptian pounds.

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