Appointment in Khamir

The dusty, mud-walled village of Khamir would rate no stars in any tourist's guide. It lacks water, hotels and electricity. Yet last week delegates poured into town from all directions, bouncing in trucks or on camels.

They were answering the summons of republican Premier Ahmed Noman to a peace conference that would seek an end of Yemen's bloody 32-month civil war between the republicans, supported by a 48,000-man Egyptian expeditionary force, and the royalist mountain tribes backing the deposed Imam Badr and supplied by Saudi Arabia and Britain.

Trucked Water. There were no polished tables neatly set with pads and pencils; they would have been of little use anyway since many of the delegates were illiterate. Instead, subcommittees met in carpeted corners of the village mosque, and full conclaves went on into the night in the main square, renamed "Peace Square" for the occasion and strung with kerosene lamps. As the leaders conferred, other tribesmen beat rhythms on goatskin drums and danced round the campfires with bared, curve-bladed djambias.

During the four days of the conference, tank trucks brought water and Coca-Cola to slake the delegates' thirst, and other trucks from the capital city of San'a, 50 miles to the south, brought bully beef to feed them. Premier Noman personally led an eight-mile-long motorcade to Khamir, where his aides shed their suits and uniforms for turbans and the traditional flowing robes. It was a delicate gesture toward the pro-royalist tribesmen who consider Western clothes an affront to Islam.

Neither Imam Badr nor any of his ranking chiefs were on hand at Khamir, but a handful of pro-royalist sheiks showed up, and they seemed impressed by Premier Noman's dedication to peace. Purposefully vague about such matters as the future of the Imam, Noman returned again and again to the theme that "Yemenis must solve their problems in peace and by themselves, away from outside influences that lead to disunity and conflict."

Beguiled Brothers. The conference named a committee of five tribal and four religious leaders who were charged with seeking out the "beguiled brothers" --that is, Imam Badr and his warlike friends in the mountains. Noman's peace effort--which included a private promise to work toward withdrawal of Egyptian troops--got significant backing from Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser who desperately wants to disengage from the civil war without losing face. Radio Cairo hailed the Khamir conference as the "dawn of a new era."

The once unyielding republican President Abdullah Sallal, who now must share power with Noman and three other members of a newly created supreme "presidency council," called the talks "a complete success"; even Imam Badr, in his cave headquarters in the northern mountains, broke a long silence to state, "It is essential that the conflict which has devastated our beloved country be brought to an end by peaceful negotiations between the Yemeni people themselves." It marked the first time in many months that the talk in Yemen was of peace, not war.

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