After Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, he advised the Americans to “choke on your fury,” and when John Foster Dulles died three years later, he gleefully ob served: “The worms are now feeding on this rotten old man.” Though he was more restrained about the U.S. during the Kennedy years, the “nonaligned” Nasser is now back in full invective form, as he proved last week in a tympany-tempered speech at Port Said. “Anyone who does not like our atti tude,” he roared, “can drink the sea. And if the Mediterranean is not big enough, we will give him the Red Sea as well.” Nasser’s salty slur -the Arabic equivalent of “jump in the lake” -was aimed at U.S. Ambassador Lucius D. Battle, who had been brazen enough to criti cize Nasser for his recent anti-American posture. Shortly after the U.S. Belgian rescue operation in the Congo, Egyptian mobs burned the $350.000 John F. Kennedy Library in Cairo: last week a private plane carrying two U.S. oil-company employees was shot down near Alexandria by Egyptian MIGs. More ominous from Washington’s viewpoint was Nasser’s aid to the Communist-backed Congo rebels.
In his “Victory Day” speech (celebrating the end of the 1956 Suez crisis), Nasser cockily confessed to the Congo caper. “We have sent arms to the Congolese rebels,” he boasted, “and we will continue to send arms-because the rebels need the support of all honest nations.” Inferring a U.S. threat to cut off $140 million a year in aid to Egypt (mostly surplus wheat, corn and frozen chickens), Nasser waxed indignant: “We drink tea seven days a week now: we can cut it to five. We eat meat four days; we can cut it to three. We are people of dignity, and do not accept disdain from anyone.” His own tongue somewhat carried away, Egypt’s strongman vowed to “cut off the tongue” of anyone who voices “words against us.”
Then, throwing a soulful glance at visiting Soviet Troubleshooter Aleksandr Shelepin, Nasser coyly dropped his punch line: “We shall not sell our independence for 30, 40 or even 50 million pounds.” The price was indubitably high, but Shelepin must have got the message.
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