A Potentate with Potential

King Hassan II likes to tell his visitors that Morocco is "a rich country where the people are poor." He proved his point last week when he arrived in the U.S. to ask for aid. Accompanying him aboard the Italian liner Raffaello, which had made a special stop in Casablanca to pick him up, was a 136-member party that included five princes, two princesses, nine Cabinet ministers, two generals, nine lance bearers in orange capes, his court physician, a maitre d'hotel, the royal chef, four cooks and a white-jelabbed servant whose only duty is to brew the kingly coffee.

If Hassan had a lot coming with him to the U.S., he also had a lot going for him. Once a playboy whose chief pursuits were sports cars and sporting girls, the young monarch, now 37, has changed many of his ways since he inherited the throne in 1961. Washington considers him not only a friend but an energetic, intelligent and responsible ruler--a potentate with potential. Although Morocco is officially nonaligned, Hassan leans unwaveringly toward the West, even gives silent sympathy to the U.S. stand in Viet Nam. More important, his refusal to take part in the Arab boycott against Israel has made him a possible moderator, at least in Washington's eyes, in the Middle East's most explosive running crisis.

Camel-Powered. At present, however, Hassan's nation is in trouble. Two successive droughts have brought Morocco, whose economy is still based largely on camel-powered subsistence farming, dangerously close to famine--despite emergency U.S. Food for Peace shipments that last year totaled $33.6 million. An ambitious three-year development plan collapsed when the French cut off $100 million a year in aid, a move caused by Parisian petulance over the kidnaping of exiled Moroccan Leftist Mehdi ben Barka. And the Moroccans fear an invasion from leftist Algeria, with which they have been fighting a minor border war since 1963.

Sympathetic though it may be to Hassan, the U.S. is hesitant to grant him its all-out support. Washington readily agreed to send Morocco an extra 500,000 tons of wheat, and promised Hassan $15 million in military aid to protect his borders. But it is not about to supplant French aid to Hassan's development plans, if for no other reason than the realization that the U.S. can never replace France as Morocco's Western mentor.

Morocco, moreover, presents the U.S. with a difficult diplomatic problem. Aside from Egypt, it is North Africa's oldest nation, and its Moorish kings once ruled most of the western Sahara.

Their rule was broken by the French conquest in the 19th century, but Morocco still claims its former lands, including much of the Algerian Sahara, the northern parts of Senegal and Mali and all of Mauritania. Morocco's territorial claims are plainly unacceptable to its neighbors, who brand them "neo-imperialism," and embarrassing to its friends. For all Washington's interest in protecting Morocco, it cannot afford to give Hassan's army anything more than defensive weapons.

Jet-Set. Within Morocco itself, Hassan's expansive ambitions have a better chance. Shortly after he came to the throne, he called in International Monetary Fund experts to help him stabilize the nation's finances, and the result has been a reform in tax collection, wiser government spending and a mild austerity program that has allowed him to build a modest foreign currency reserve. Realizing the value of the tourist dollar, he has promoted a series of resort hotels from Tangier to Marrakesh, turned Morocco into the haunting ground of such jet-set types as Truman Capote and Princess Lee Radziwill. Last year 700,000 tourists--nearly twice as many as in 1965--converged on Morocco.

Hassan also made a stab at establishing an effective Parliament elected by universal suffrage, but when its haggling members managed to pass only two minor bills in two years, the King gave up. He closed Parliament, cracked down on all political activity and reverted to the autocratic ways of his Alaouite ancestors, who swept out of the desert to establish their dynasty in the 17th century. He is now his own Prime Minister, army chief and Amir al Moumineen (Commander of the Faithful). He relies on his 27 Cabinet ministers primarily for background briefings and good fellowship, makes most government decisions by himself. Revered by his people as a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, he keeps up his peasant support by weekly visits to the whitewashed villages that dot Morocco's mountains, desert and coast. "Everything in Morocco depends on the King," says a Cabinet Minister, "except the weather."

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