Word: hassanal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...favorite daughter had eloped with a roué, leaving her parents bewildered and angry. So it was that Ahmed Reda Guedira, a royal counselor to King Hassan II of Morocco, faced a decidedly frosty reception in Washington last week when he visited Vice President George Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz and other Administration officials. A month ago the conservative Hassan, long a staunch U.S. ally, had suddenly initiated a treaty of friendship with Libya's radical strongman Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Washington's Public Enemy No. 1. Officially the State Department admitted to being "surprised" by the improbable...
...attempt to soothe those wounded feelings, Guedira last week reiterated that the King had been the moving and controlling force in the partnership and that Hassan, after more than a decade of swapping insults and threats with Gaddafi, had every hope of taming his mercurial new friend. In addition, said Guedira, the pact between the two countries would bolster Morocco's military strength against such inimical neighbors as Algeria and Tunisia without in any way jeopardizing its friendship with the U.S. But Administration officials, who now fear that arms and funds sent to Morocco may fall into the hands...
...unlikely liaison scattered diplomatic sparks in many directions. Washington dispatched roving Ambassador Vernon Walters to Rabat to warn Hassan that an angry Congress might now try to block the $140 million in military and economic aid earmarked for Morocco in fiscal 1985. French President François Mitterrand sent a minister to Algeria and another to Chad; he himself dashed off to Rabat to see whether the new alliance could be of help in settling French differences with Libya in Chad. Even Syrian President Hafez Assad, who has not left his country since a serious heart attack ten months...
Washington had clearly lost face by not knowing that a marriage was in the making. Its anguish was only increased by the treaty's probable terms. According to some reports, Hassan has promised to lend Libya some 30,000 of his crack troops in the event of another Israeli war. He may also start handing back Libyan dissidents (he is said to have already returned one leading anti-Gaddafi agitator, Omar Meheishi, to almost certain imprisonment). Worst of all, in Washington's eyes, the King's handshake gives Gaddafi, a leader who has openly exported terrorism...
Since Moroccan officials say privately that Gaddafi cannot be trusted, and since the Libyan leader has not hidden his disdain of Hassan's Western ways, the union is likely to meet the same fate as Libya's King previous marriages...