Egypt: Fatigued Finish

Wilted and liverish, his famed bounce almost gone, Nikita Khrushchev sweated grimly through the final week of his state visit to Egypt. He barely glanced at the Karnak temples, passed up the German-built steel mill near Cairo and even the star belly dancer at the Nile Hilton who, in deference to the Russian visitors, obeyed the usually ignored regulations by being swathed in silk from neck to ankles. Khrushchev’s humor less, polemic speeches and their end less translations bored dwindling crowds in Cairo, Port Said and Alexandria.

They felt that Nikita might as well have gone back home after attending to his main business — inaugurating the Aswan Dam.

Interpreting Unity. Obviously recalling Chinese Premier Chou En-lai’s Cai ro visit only six months ago, Khrushchev tried hard to sound every bit as revolutionary as Peking. He attacked Israel as “an agent of imperialism,” supported the Arab policy on Jordan water, tore into the British and their position at Aden.

.At one point he went a little too far for his hosts. When Nasser spoke of Arab unity, Nikita asked testily: “Does this mean we Russians should go home?

We are not Arabs.” Making a heavy-handed pitch about how Arab oil riches and Russian power together could defeat “any enemy,” Khrushchev explained that unity must not be simply considered in national terms but must embrace the working classes all over the world. Some Arabs, for instance those in the oil sheikdom of Kuwait, continued Khrushchev angrily, are “lackeys of imperialism. Can you really unite with such people?” The air chilled, interpreters stammered, the Egyptian Ambassador to Moscow, Russian-speaking Murad Ghaleb, explained to Nasser that the translation had been faulty. “No, no,” interrupted Nikita. “I meant what I said.”

Balancing Budgets. In sum, while the dam represents a considerable success for Russia, Khrushchev fared less well with his personal and political appeals in Egypt. At week’s end the sight of ripe Egyptian wheat roused him to his old antics as he toured the Liberation province land-reclamation project. He sickled and tasted some of the grain (“a bit dry”), criticized the housing facilities for peasants (“too costly”), later congratulated winners of a skeet-shooting contest. Between outings, Nikita retired to rest and continue private talks with Nasser.

Much of the talk was inevitably about money. This year Egypt must pay Moscow the first of twelve annual payments on the estimated $271 million Moscow is putting into the Aswan Dam and ancillary installations. Though eventually the project will pay for itself in new cropland and electric power, these benefits will not be fully realized for nearly a decade, during which Nasser needs even larger sums for industrial development, and already Egypt owes the Soviet bloc $800 million plus a large, secret bill for arms. Khrushchev hinted broadly that there would be further massive credits—even though some Russians complained that Moscow already had too many foreign aid commitments.