Word: nasser
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Three Arab nations boycotted Nasser's summit outright: Morocco, Algeria and Iraq. Morocco's King Hassan probably stayed away simply to avoid entanglement in a faraway fight. The other two did so out of sympathy with the guerrillas. Libya's youthful new strongman, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who has remained outwardly loyal to Nasser, attended the conference-but only after siding strongly with the Palestinians and offering to send Libyan troops into the fight on the commandos' side. Nothing ever came of that, but there is speculation that Gaddafi, who came to power last year...
Sitting Idle. Nasser's most trustworthy allies at the summit were Saudi Arabia's King Feisal, Lebanon's new President, Suleiman Franjieh, and Sudan's strongman, Major General Jaafar Numeiry, who served as mediator between the Cairo conferees and the antagonists in Jordan. It was the goal of Nasser to stop the fighting before either side achieved victory. Nasser still needs as much of a Palestinian "constituency," as one Egyptian official put it, as he can salvage; but he also would like to keep Hussein, his primary link to the West...
Because the bloodshed has reinforced sympathy among many Arabs for the Palestinian cause, Nasser's attempt to satisfy both sides seems almost hopeless. Nonetheless, he is determined to support moderate elements of the fedayeen, hoping they will be able to work out a reconciliation with Hussein...
...light of the rivalries and lingering enmities among the Arabs, it is hardly surprising Nasser's summit came off no more successfully than Farouk's. Before the conclave got under way, Egypt's Minister of National Guidance, Mohammed Heikal, proclaimed: "This is a meeting of Arab leaders who think that they cannot sit idle in their air-conditioned offices making proclamations about the crisis in Jordan." The group, indeed, was able to engineer a merciful cease-fire in Jordan. But Arab leaders also had plenty of opportunity to sit in their air-conditioned rooms at the Nile...
...Jordan was one of the prime reasons for the Arab summit, when President Noureddine Atassi showed up in Cairo to represent the Damascus government he seemed surprised that anyone was upset. "You said you would never permit the Palestine resistance movement to be liquidated," he told a furious Gamal Nasser. "Well, they were being liquidated and we tried to save them. What can be wrong with that...