The Stubborn One

On the very day the mutinous Iraqi army officers took over Baghdad and proclaimed their comradeship with Nasser, an Egyptian officer arrived in Khartoum and announced himself new counselor to the Egyptian embassy. To the Sudanese government the name of Ali Khashaba was familiar. Iraq and Lebanon had already expelled him for subversion. Last spring Saudi Arabia, kicking him out, accused him of masterminding a plot to murder King Saud. Within three days of his arrival in Khartoum, the Sudanese government charged Ali Khashaba with stirring up subversion, gave him exactly 24 hours to get out of the country.

Among the many places Egypt's President Nasser keeps a roving eye on is his big (967,500 sq. mi.) southern neighbor of Sudan. The Sudan, ruled jointly for 56 years by Britain and Egypt, got its independence only 2 1/2 years ago. But the Sudan's wily and forthright Moslem Premier Abdullah Khalil has shown himself surprisingly capable of keeping his young nation free. Eight months ago he smashed a threatened coup by arresting three officers and firing eight others, has since insisted on keeping his army free of Cairo-tainted men. Though pro-Nasserites shrilly cry that "American aid is more dangerous than British imperialism," Khalil goes right on negotiating with the U.S. When the Marines landed in Lebanon, he bluntly declared himself "overjoyed." Last week he defeated a parliamentary effort to reject U.S. technical aid, as a protest against the Lebanese landings. Several days later Khalil triumphantly announced a new $39 million loan from the World Bank for his country's railways and shipping.

Following his policy of "nonalignment," Khalil quickly recognized the new revolutionary regime in Iraq, but his expulsion of the conspiring Egyptian counselor brought a typical Cairo accusation of "disregarding the friendly and brotherly relations linking the peoples of the two countries."

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