SADAT

By now the well-groomed cavalry mustache, gleaming dome and heavily lidded eyes have become familiar sights in every Arab land. But except for an occasional trip to Moscow or some other Soviet-bloc capital in quest of arms and aid, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat has rarely ventured beyond the Middle East. Last week Sadat's Boeing 707 presidential jet whisked him westward for a change. By way of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, and Vienna, Sadat flew to the scenic Austrian city of Salzburg for a face-to-face meeting—his first—with Gerald Ford.

First Round. The two-day summit in Salzburg increased Sadat's stature as the pre-eminent spokesman for the Arabs and as a truly international figure. More than that, it was the first round in a series of talks that could prove a watershed in the turbulent conflict that has convulsed the Middle East almost constantly for 27 years.

In the space of five days this week, Sadat had two critically important dates to keep. The first was a probe for peace: his initial meeting with Richard Nixon's successor, just a year after the former U.S. President's visit to Egypt. The second was a gamble that a new Arab-Israeli war could be averted: a ceremony marking the reopening of the Suez Canal on the anniversary of its closure in 1967 at the outset of the Six-Day War.

For Sadat—and the rest of the world—it was to be a week of high-stakes diplomacy. Despite the gemütlich surroundings, the Salzburg talks were considerably more than mere window dressing designed to give the impression of activity. Peace negotiations have been at an impasse for two months, ever since the collapse of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's shuttle between Israel and the Arab states. Said a White House security adviser: "The most dangerous thing is to do nothing. We can't afford that." Warned Egypt's Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy: "The Middle East situation will be gravely endangered if the meeting fails to produce positive results."

The chief hope was that Ford and Sadat would find some formula to set back in motion Kissinger's step-by-step talks between Cairo and Jerusalem. Any final decision on such a move would have to wait until next week, however, when Ford returns to Washington and meets Israel's Premier Yitzhak Rabin for another two days of talks. Whatever the outcome of Ford's delicate negotiations, two things are clear:

1) The longer that fundamental issues remain unresolved in the Middle East, the greater is the likelihood of a fifth Arab-Israeli war. Many U.S. analysts are convinced that if there is no progress toward a negotiated solution, war will break out in 1976.

2) The Soviets, who two months ago were pressing to reconvene the multi-nation Geneva Conference, are now less eager to sponsor such a meeting. They are worried that it might fail and seem resigned to another Kissinger attempt at direct diplomacy. At his meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Vienna's Hotel Imperial two weeks ago, Kissinger was asked by a newsman if he would return soon to the Middle East. "I don't plan to go," said the Secretary. Cut in Gromyko archly: "Not tomorrow, anyway."

Determined to avoid any incident that might mar the first meeting between Ford and Sadat, Austrian officials mounted a massive watch over the Salzburg sessions. More than 2,200 Austrian police and security men were mobilized, to add to the small armies of plainclothesmen that Ford and Sadat were bringing. Armored cars and armed soldiers ringed Salzburg's airport, and detecting devices were strung around the airport to ward off intruders.

Flying in after the NATO summit in Brussels and a brief stopover in Madrid to visit Generalissimo Francisco Franco, Ford was lodged in Schloss Klessheim, an 18th century baroque chateau with a pink façade. Sadat, eager to size up Ford but unwilling to visit Washington until there is more progress toward peace with Israel, stayed at the elegant, 525-year-old Schloss Fuschl, a hunting lodge.*

Where to hold the talks proved an almost insurmountable problem. The Austrians first offered a Salzburg landmark called Wasserschloss Fürstenbrunn, but U.S. officials apologetically rejected the mansion; as they explained it, the name—Watercastle—evoked some unfortunate memories. Then the Egyptians turned down Mirabell Castle because Sadat has a mild heart condition and preferred not to climb two flights of stairs. Finally, both sides settled on the former throne room of the Salzburg Residenz, a onetime archiepiscopal palace equipped with an elevator.

Once the Salzburg meetings ended, Sadat was eager to speed home to preside over one of the most jubilant moments of his 4½ years as Egypt's President—the Suez reopening (see box page 28). Sadat is aware of the canal's economic potential for Egypt's 37 million hard-pressed people. He is aiming to repopulate the canal's shores and has established a giant free-trade zone around Port Said to lure industry and generate jobs.

Sadat is even more aware of the canal's diplomatic symbolism. With Israeli forces positioned ten miles from the waterway's east bank, and strong enough to close the canal virtually at will despite the presence of Egyptian forces along the east bank, Sadat more or less is offering the canal as a hostage to peace. He hopes that its opening will prove to be the kind of winding down of the state of belligerency that Israel has been pressing for.

Arab Spokesman. To preserve his political position both internally and with his fellow Arab leaders, Sadat is barring passage to vessels flying the Israeli flag. Some time between the canal's reopening and next week's Ford-Rabin talks, however, the Israelis might attempt to send through a ship flying another country's flag but carrying Israeli cargo. Despite official Egyptian pronouncements to the contrary, Sadat has quietly ordered canal authorities to let such nonstrategic cargo through.

All told, Sadat was taking some venturesome steps at a time when the Middle East's other protagonists were hesitant about taking any steps at all. Before the Salzburg summit, he prepared his ground skillfully by swinging through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan and Syria. Accordingly, he will meet Ford not merely as Egypt's representative but, he said in Damascus, as the spokesman of all the Arab people.

One problem for Ford may well be a misapprehension by Sadat—and the other Arabs for whom he will be speaking—about what a U.S. President can and cannot do. As an Israeli Foreign Ministry official said: "Egypt must begin making some concessions of its own. It cannot expect America to offer up Israel on a platter."
Having committed himself to a relationship with the U.S. that has brought him under considerable Arab criticism, Sadat has so far been disappointed by the meager returns. He staged a festive welcome for Nixon in Cairo last year and in return was grandly promised $250 million in aid and a nuclear reactor. To Sadat's chagrin, Congress delayed action on Nixon's promises. Moreover, Congress was giving "my good friend Henry," as Sadat has come to call Kissinger, a great deal of trouble. First Congress challenged his policies on Turkey and the Soviet Union, then two weeks ago no fewer than 76 Senators signed a letter advocating aid for Israel (TIME, June 2). Arab officials see this as evidence of erosion in Kissinger's domestic position, and they fear that it may spread to the Middle East problem.
During his pre-summit soundings, Sadat told a press conference in Kuwait: "President Ford can solve the crisis if he wants to. The U.S. is in possession of 90% of the cards in the game." Therefore, he announced, he would seek a commitment that the U.S. would not agree to continued Israeli occupation of Arab territory. He also let it be known that, in view of congressional support for up to $2.5 billion in aid requested by Israel in the next fiscal year, he too intended to ask for American financial help. Publicly, the Ford Administration demurred at granting aid; privately, Administration spokesmen indicated that they were ready to discuss it. For one thing, they explained, it might be less expensive and less dangerous for the U.S. to shore up the Egyptian economy than to rearm Israel for a new war. For another, said a State Department official, "if we leave Egypt to solve its money problems in the Arab world, then we shouldn't be surprised if Egypt's political maneuvering remains strictly in an Arab context." The embarrassing problem for Ford, of course, is that Congress appears overwhelmingly opposed to any aid to Egypt.
Popular Hawks. Israel, angered and badly shaken by Kissinger's insinuations that his efforts had been doomed by Jerusalem's intransigence, is aware that it will be under pressure to offer some concessions. "Let's face it," said an Israeli diplomat, referring to the Salzburg talks, "when you get the President involved and the meetings are at that level, something has to happen."
Most Israelis, however, were still behind Premier Rabin's decision to suspend shuttle diplomacy rather than make concessions without a suitable quid pro quo. But, significantly, public opinion polls gave hawks like Defense Minister Shimon Peres and hard-lining former General Ariel ("Arik") Sharon higher popularity ratings than Rabin. In view of such feelings, political observers were convinced that Rabin's fragile coalition government could not offer major territorial concessions to the Arabs and survive. Nonetheless, a nagging minority believed that the government at least ought to try. Argues U.S. Political Scientist Hans Morgenthau, currently a guest lecturer at Israel's Haifa University: "Israel has to come forward with a proposal and let the other side react to it." Adds former Foreign Minister Abba Eban: "The psychological tension is such that even if we had an interim agreement in the Sinai, we would not be able to go back to the situation we had between 1967 and 1973—namely, prolonged periods of quiescence. That's the great change. The option of standing still is out."
Unsure Arabs. The most vocal appeal for new departures comes from a fledgling Israeli political party that was founded last month by former Labor Party Secretary-General Arie Eliav and independent gadfly Shulamit Aloni. Named Ya'ad (Target), it has an initial membership of 55,000, mostly intellectuals, middle-class professionals and kibbutzniks. The party believes that Israel should withdraw from nearly all territories occupied in the 1967 war. To symbolize this belief, along with Ya'ad's insistence that the Israeli government is neglecting its rural communities in Galilee and the Negev, the party held its organizational meeting in a small town called Shelomi (My Peace), scarcely 500 yds. from the barbed wire and minefields along the border with Lebanon.
If the Israelis were unsure what to make of the Middle East political situation and Sadat's maneuvers, so was the Arab world. Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi was the only Arab who openly opposed Sadat's moves toward peace. Gaddafi has been newly reinforced by a massive arms and aid agreement with the Soviet Union. Egyptian newspapers set the figure at a staggering $12 billion; U.S. analysts estimate it to be something over $1 billion. Other radical Arabs reserved judgment but were obviously ready to criticize Sadat if Washington appeared unable to pressure Israel into major concessions.
The most dangerous problem for Egypt's President is still the displaced Palestinians, whom the U.S. steadfastly refuses to recognize as a political entity until they agree to recognize Israel's existence. The moderates, headed by Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, cannot take that step now without being assured of some kind of payoff. The hard-liners may well have been encouraged in their persistent resistance to recognition by the American debacle in Indochina. TODAY VIET NAM, TOMORROW PALESTINE, headlined the P.L.O. newspaper Falastin al Thawra.

Privately, Palestinian leaders fear that they are losing support from heretofore steadfast allies. Saudi Arabia's new King Khalid has in effect acknowledged Israel's right to exist by saying: "Israel can live within her 1967 borders." Russia's Gromyko has gone a step further by suggesting Soviet guarantees for Israel in return for its withdrawal from occupied territories. Said Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the Syria-based Saiqa group within the P.L.O.: "The parties that really need guarantees are the Palestinians and the Arabs. Gromyko made the mistake of picturing the pyramid standing on its head."

Eroded Arafat. Arafat's followers are worried that confrontation countries like Egypt and Syria are increasingly more concerned with their own peace negotiations than with the Palestinian problem. The result has been a subtle erosion of Arafat's relatively moderate approach, based on a political solution and encouraged by Sadat, and slight gains for the "rejection front" that is fostered by hard-liners like George Habash, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Should the split deepen, it could divide the Arab world and endanger Sadat's position.

No one is more aware than Sadat of the precarious political path along which he is walking and the fateful consequences of any misstep. If war erupts anew, the canal would be quickly blocked. A prolonged deadlock in peace talks could eventually also spell the end of Arab moderation and possibly of Anwar Sadat as well. Balancing this threat, however, is a conclusion that Sadat reached long ago. The 1973 war may have restored Arab pride (even though, after initial successes, the Arab armies took a beating), but in the end peace is necessary to help Egypt's stumbling economy. Unless the economy improves, Sadat could be toppled from power as surely as by an unsuccessful war.

Egypt's economy was already strained when Sadat succeeded Gamal Abdel Nasser as President in 1970. Since then it has got worse. One of the problems is geographic: though vast in area, Egypt is mostly desert. Fully 96% of its population is jammed into a narrow green belt averaging seven miles in width and 500 miles long in the Nile Valley. Another problem is the population itself, which is growing at a million per year despite belated efforts to control it.

Egypt's industry is woefully inadequate. Despite sizable subsidies from other Arab nations, the government has been unable to create enough jobs, and in the end has itself become the biggest employer. As a result, the bureaucracy is stupendous, and even the humblest functionaries have become what a Western diplomat calls "masters of creative inefficiency." Government offices that could operate with 500 people are burdened with 2,000. When Sadat decreed an end to censorship of newspapers soon after he became President, he was not lauded as a liberalizer—far from it. A delegation of censors trooped before the publisher of Cairo's leading newspaper, al Ahram, and complained: "You pretend to defend the common people, but here you are trying to deprive us of our jobs." Inflation is currently running at a 20% annual rate, which forced Sadat to give a 30% cost of living bonus to low-salaried state employees.

Meanwhile, in a nation where the gross national product is only $9.6 billion, the foreign trade deficit has reached $2.8 billion. Sadat is further burdened by a huge debt to the Soviet Union of roughly $6 billion. And the Russians, irritated by Sadat's expulsion of up to 20,000 Soviet military advisers and technicians from Egypt in 1972 and by his coziness with the Americans, are insisting that he pay up. "They won't even give me a period of grace," Sadat complained recently. "They won't even replenish Egypt's arms losses of the 1973 war. Yet they have agreed to give arms to Libya in legendary dimensions."

New Cities. All of this adds up to a desperate need for peace on Egypt's part so that the country can address its overwhelming problems. Impressed by Sadat's openness to investment from abroad, foreign investors who were put off by Nasser's restrictive Arab socialism are reportedly willing to spend as much as $3 billion on Egyptian development projects. But these are long-term investments, and for the time being the country is earmarking 25% of its G.N.P. each year for military preparedness.

As a result, Sadat in his travels through the Middle East must beg for funds even as he is trying to solidify his position as spokesman for all the Arab people. So far, he has had some success. Several new housing cities are rising alongside the Suez Canal as part of a rebuilding program that goes hand in hand with canal renovations: Faisal City, named for the late King of Saudi Arabia; Sabah City for the Sheik of Kuwait; Zayed City in honor of Abu Dhabi's Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al Nahayan.

Sadat shows visitors to Egypt not only the new housing cities but the rubble that remains in older towns from the Six-Day War of 1967, the war of attrition from 1968 to 1970 and the October war of 1973. Since 1967, he tells his guests, the hostilities have cost Cairo $24 billion. "Think what a paradise Egypt would be," he says dramatically, "if that had been invested to develop this country." When the Palestine National Council, a kind of parliament of the P.L.O., met in Cairo last year, Sadat sent its members on a sightseeing tour to Suez city, Port Taufiq and Qantara East. Explained an Egyptian editor: "He wanted them to have an idea of what Egypt sacrificed for the Palestinians."

Some Middle East observers suggest that Sadat badly needs a lift right now. He has just about exhausted the political popularity that he accumulated in the October war and as a result of the disengagement negotiations that put Egyptian troops back on the east bank of the canal last year. There are considerable signs of unrest in Egypt. Workers rioted briefly in January and again in March to protest rising prices and food shortages, and students also demonstrated.

In addition to trying to improve the economy, Sadat has also strengthened his ties with Egypt's 700,000-man armed forces. He eased Vice President Hussein Shafei out of his job and gave it to Air Marshal Hosni Mobarak, 47, head of the Egyptian air force. Mobarak has two attributes that please Sadat: he is deferential to the President, and he is hostile to the Russians as a result of some unhappy contacts with their officers. "Mobarak doesn't just dislike the Russians," says a friend. "He detests them."

Fall Guy. Still, Sadat's principal power base is not the army but Egypt's affluent landowners and its urban upper-middle class; though those groups total fewer than 2 million people, or one-twentieth of the population, they dominate the country. When Sadat was Vice President, Nasser mocked him as "old Goha," after a legendary fall guy in Egyptian folk humor. He insisted that "Sadat's greatest ambition is to own a big automobile and have the government pay for the gasoline." But on his own, old Goha turned out to be perhaps a shrewder politician than Nasser, and one of his most astute moves was to proclaim an infitah, or open-door economic policy. Two months after he was installed, he called for the repeal of the "sequestration" orders that Nasser had used to seize the land and property of the upper class. According to some estimates, there are now more millionaires in Egypt than there were under King Farouk. At least some of them have made their piles through kickbacks on government contracts, especially for arms and heavy vehicles. Forty percent of the total cost of a contract often finds its way into various private pockets.

For the most part, Sadat tends to overlook such dealings. Since he is part of the system, he has no desire to topple it. Rather, he has a stake in preserving the existing social structure, and he believes that the best way to preserve it is to stabilize the whole area by getting a peace settlement—one written by a moderate like Anwar Sadat.

Outside Cairo, Sadat's power base includes the 'umdas, or mayors, of rural villages; bred in the Nile Delta village of Mit Abu el Kom, Sadat is as comfortable with local mayors as he is with sophisticated city dwellers. In fact, Sadat functions as if Egypt were one big Mit Abu el Kom and he the great 'umda. Sadat has pretty much neutralized the once-mighty Arab Socialist Union, which Nasser established as Egypt's only political party. He uses the A.S.U. only as a sounding board of grass roots opinion; membership is no longer mandatory for representatives sitting in the People's Assembly, Egypt's parliament, and Sadat has allowed small, informal party groupings to develop. Although the assembly debates legislation and occasionally calls government officials to task, it is the President who makes the decisions that count. He carried on negotiations with Henry Kissinger largely in camera, and Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy, who sat in, is the only other Egyptian who knows all that went on.

Sadat operates with only a small coterie of close friends and advisers. The closest is Sayed Marei, 60, a wealthy landowner whose son is married to Sadat's daughter Noha. At Sadat's insistence, Marei was named head of the People's Assembly, despite vigorous protests against his staunch upper-class conservatism. Also close to Sadat is Premier Mamduh Salem, 57, a former policeman who endeared himself to the President in 1971 by arresting the then Vice President Ali Sabry, a Communist sympathizer, on charges of plotting to overthrow the President. Since then, Sadat has had a record of no serious internal opposition.

Sadat has proved quite capable of bold leadership and blunt talk among Arab leaders. Scheduling a meeting with Syrian President Hafez Assad on peace negotiations last month, he insisted that it be held in the Saudi capital of Riyadh; he felt that Saudi Arabia's new King Khalid was weak and needed the prestige that would come from hosting such a get-together. In the course of his 7½-hour conference with Assad, Sadat heatedly warned that he had no intention of missing a chance for a settlement in Sinai because of Syrian foot-dragging. In another high-level discussion, Sadat told King Hussein: "A majority of Arabs on the West Bank do not want you as their King." And he recently told Arafat: "When we get a settlement, you will have a state made up of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip." Period. In so saying, Sadat in effect was ruling out Palestinian claims to Israeli territory held before 1967.

Bankrupting Egypt. The contrast with Nasser is striking in other respects. Though it is almost five years since Nasser died, Radio Tripoli still broadcasts his recorded speeches, and in Lebanon Moslems carry his portrait in religious processions. But at home—surprisingly —large numbers of Egyptians now consider Nasser a latter-day Ivan the Terrible. A recent bestseller on Nasser's reign is titled The Devil. Recalls TIME's Wilton Wynn, who has reported from Cairo under both Presidents:

"Nasser was an epic hero to the Arabs whom he did not govern, a giant in the sky in whom they could believe blindly, who led them in a long search for dignity. He stressed image rather than performance. He could win applause while bankrupting Egypt or losing the '56 war with Israel. He once told a diplomat: 'Blow for blow, slap for slap. I don't act, I react.' Inside Egypt itself, however, Nasser had to resort to police methods to maintain power.

"Lacking the Nasser charisma, Sadat has had to rely on solid performance at home and abroad. His success ultimately depends on the price of bread in Port Said or on Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. In contrast to Nasser, Sadat pointedly told the parliament recently: I prefer action to reaction. When I asked him recently if he was angry with America because of Kissinger's March shuttle failure, he took a puff on his pipe and answered: 'Dr. Kissinger was honest with us and did his best. Why should I be angry with the Americans?' Sadat tries to hold the friendship of the big powers and fellow Arab leaders by being a friend to them. He cannot go over their heads to the people as Nasser did, and he is shrewd enough not to try."

Abiding Distrust. Nor can he win peace in the Middle East on his own, without close cooperation from the other Arab states. That is what he meant when he said recently: "Sinai is no problem for me. My problems are the Golan Heights and the West Bank." If he is to solve these problems, Sadat is convinced that Israel must bend more. On their part, the Israelis vow, as a Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem put it last week: "The more peace he offers us, the more land we will give him."

For many Israelis, one problem is an abiding distrust of Sadat, who, despite his peace initiatives and seeming sincerity, is after all the man who ordered the surprise 1973 attack against Israel. According to a recent poll, 62% of all Israelis doubt that Egypt is truly interested in peace. As Abba Eban said last week, the question remains: "Is Sadat really convinced that this nation is a historical reality?"

He appears to be, and the fact is that, as a Western diplomat in Beirut put it, "Sadat's game is the only one in town right now." Despite the Israelis' understandable qualms about Sadat, the time may be at hand for Israel—and Egypt as well—to take certain risks: mostly political on Sadat's part, military as well as political on Rabin's. Unless there is some movement, there is a growing danger that the name of the game in the Middle East will once again be war.