Succession and Stalemate

When the late Gamal Abdel Nasser staged a presidential referendum in 1965, he ran up a 99.9% vote of approval. Only 65 voters out of 6,951,206 rebuffed him. Last week his successor as Egypt's President fared considerably worse. More than 7,100,000 voters were asked to vote naam (yes) or la (no) on the question "Do you agree that Anwar Sadat should be President?" They gave the 52-year-old former Vice President no more than a 90.04% naam vote, and 711,252 Egyptians voted la. Two days after the election and 19 days after his predecessor's death, Sadat was duly inaugurated.

Subtle Signs. Despite all those las, Sadat's elevation was sufficiently swift and smooth to demonstrate a degree of continuity, if not necessarily stability. Subtle signs were beginning to surface of a potential struggle for power that could convulse the most populous Arab nation.

> Item: Hassanein Heikal, editor of Cairo's Al Ahram and Minister of Guidance (information), printed a eulogy to Nasser written by the moderately pro-Western Zakaria Mohieddin. That gave rise to speculation that Heikal was seeking to retrieve Mohieddin from obscurity. Once one of Nasser's intimates, Mohieddin's name had not even been mentioned in the Egyptian press since he fell out with Nasser in 1968 over economic policy and Egypt's increasing reliance on the Soviets.

> Item: Rumors from Cairo insisted that Nasser on his deathbed had designated Mohieddin his heir, which was not likely.

> Item: Reports from outside Egypt suggested that Sabry and the Soviets have agreed to send home 600 Egyptian students and 300 army officers training in East bloc nations. These could become the nucleus of a force that would thrust Sabry into a ruling position.

These stories indicate a jockeying for influence that could have a disastrous effect on the Suez cease-fire between Egypt and Israel. In a bid for supremacy, the opposing pro-and anti-Soviet factions in Cairo might resume shooting. So might forces in Jordan (see following story), where the first fight since the civil war broke out last week.

The very confusion of the situations in both Cairo and Amman might also keep all sides too busy to start anything. That at least is what Jerusalem hopes. For the moment, Israel's mood is relaxed; the nation last week celebrated the harvest feast of Sukkoth. The top news on Radio Israel, with a cease-fire in effect, was not battle casualties but the early arrival of the winter rains.

Nevertheless, Israel, violating the standstill under the guise of "maintenance," has been steadily refurbishing the Bar-Lev Line on the east bank of the Suez Canal since August. Sandbags have been replaced by cement, and roads have been asphalted to forestall mining.

Unyielding Position. For impact and drama, the Israeli violations pale alongside Egypt's in moving up scores of SA-2 and SA3 missiles with Soviet connivance. Half a world away, at the United Nations, the Egyptian violations and their effect on the U.S.-proposed Middle East peace talks became a focus for intense discussions.

One of the more significant meetings took place between U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. In a four-hour working dinner at the Soviet U.N. mission, Rogers brought up the question of missile violations and stressed the U.S. desire for rectification. Gromyko, in turn, accused Washington of tricking Cairo by promising Israel additional Phantom jets even though Nasser had agreed to a ceasefire.

Earlier, Egypt's Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad met privately with Rogers at the Secretary's suite in Manhattan's Waldorf Towers; such is the degree of U.S. concern that President Nixon personally telephoned Rogers' suite to voice still one more plea for rectification.

Riad was unyielding. Publicly, he has denied that Egypt has violated the ceasefire. To Rogers he explained that Nasser's successor must cope with forces in Egypt that are not particularly anxious to continue the cease-fire with Israel beyond its Nov. 5 expiration date.

Some U.S. officials would like to see Jerusalem soften its insistence on rectification as a condition for peace talks with U.N. Representative Gunnar Jarring. The Israelis argue that to yield on the missile issue could have disastrous consequences, since Egypt has flaunted bad faith and could not be trusted to keep whatever peace emerged from the Jarring talks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.