Between Thunder & Sun

Gamal Abdel Nasser dined quietly at Aleppo's guesthouse, then announced with studied casualness that he was going out for a tour of Syria's largest city (pop. nearly 500,000). He climbed into a black sedan driven by Lieut. Colonel Abdel Hamid Serraj, the man he has picked for his proconsul in Syria-now known as the United Arab Republic's "Northern Region." Serraj drove him to the airport, where Nasser's private airplane waited.' Under cover of darkness and secrecy, the plane headed southwest past Israel's intervening airspace, and arrived safely back in Cairo.

Despite the somewhat ignominious departure maneuver, which promises to become habitual, Nasser lost no time in seeking out a rostrum in Cairo to sound the new glories of the U.A.R. and its leader. In Cairo's Republic Square he thundered: "Always the Arab peoples were able to conquer invaders whenever they joined and stood together in one army-as in Saladin's day."

"The new Saladin!" shrieked the crowd, remembering the great 12th century Moslem warrior who swept all but a remnant of the Crusaders from the Holy Land.

The New Federation. In significant contrast with Dictator Nasser's balcony-built merger, the Hashemite Kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan last week brought forth a new constitution conceived in careful wisdom and dedicated to the proposition that member nations of the new Arab Federation are best treated equals. By late April both countries will have held elections amounting to a referendum on their federation. Then Iraq's 22-year-old King Feisal, as chief of the federal state, will appoint a premier to name a federal cabinet, and the Arab Federation will be in business.

The new federation will have integrated armed forces and a unified diplomatic service (though Iraq and Jordan will keep their separate seats in the United Nations). There will be the right of free movement between the two countries for all citizens (including Jordan's jobless Palestinian refugees). Iraq, which has already begun supplying oil and mutton to

Jordan's crowded cities, will initially bear 80% of the cost of the federal budget. But besides the federal Parliament, each nation will keep its own Parliament. Each nation will issue its own passports and run its own domestic economy; e.g., Iraq will not share its oil revenues to help Jordan's development projects.

The Missing Member. Such autonomy was, in part, deliberately designed to make membership attractive to Saudi Arabia's King Saud. But last week the Middle East seethed with rumors. Nasser's charge that Saud had plotted his assassination, had put the feudal Saudi regime in deep trouble. There were stories of executions, of arrests, of planned coups d'etat by rival princes.

Behind the wild stories were these ascertainable facts: Saud and his brother, Crown Prince Feisal, are divided over Feisal's insistence on coming to some sort of terms with Nasser's new union. Arrests have been made, including at least one royal prince. Saudi Arabia has turned away all reporters at its borders for the last two weeks.

Whatever his sympathies, Saud cannot afford to ignore Nasser's appeal to his impoverished subjects. Every Saudi Arabian village has radios tuned to Cairo's broadcasts. Egyptian technicians and teachers have deeply infiltrated the kingdom. For all his oil riches, Saud's financial position is so bad that world banks ceased several months ago to honor Saudi letters of credit. Educated Saudis almost to a man are disgusted. Said one: "The King is burning up our wealth, wasting, wasting everywhere-palaces, women, bribes. He is destroying our country. It is a crime that cannot go on."

The keeper of Islam's holy places may not succeed in holding his own course between the dynamic forces struggling for the leadership of Arab unity in the Middle East.

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