Word: rabat
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While the U.S. and Israel were quarreling, so were the Arab states during their summit at Morocco's Rabat Hilton. The divisive agenda item was an Egyptian proposal that the other twelve members of the conference assist Egypt and Jordan by playing a greater part in the war against Israel. "I want to know whether you want to participate in the battle or not," Nasser demanded at the final working session. "I ask you please to tell me whether you want to fight." Earlier Egypt's Defense Minister, General Mohammed Fawzi, had unveiled a "mobilization plan" proposing that...
...genuinely ill with infectious hepatitis, Iraq's Hassan Bakr appeared to have a diplomatic ailment, and Syria's Noureddine Atassi simply stayed home. But every other leader of the Arab League nations, as well as Guerrilla Leader Yasser Arafat, at week's end converged on Rabat for the first Arab summit in two years. The dominant figure, of course, was Gamal Abdel Nasser. The principal aim of the Egyptian President was to try once again to unite the divided Arabs in order to exert increased pressure on Israel...
...halls of the Rabat Hilton echoed with the usual anti-Israel sentiments. But discussions were tempered somewhat by the course of outside events. Nasser recently sent a delegation to Moscow seeking increased arms shipments. The Egyptians also sought a vigorous nyet to recent U.S. peace proposals, which include, among other things, Israeli withdrawal from Sinai in return for a negotiated peace settlement with the Egyptians. The delegation came home bearing a message from Premier Aleksei Kosygin saying that Moscow still hopes for a political settlement of the Middle East crisis. Until the Soviets change their minds, which seems highly improbable...
...outlook for its reopening was never bleaker. The Arabs have called a summit conference at Rabat in December, presumably to coordinate military action against Israel. Their attitude seems to foredoom any U.S.-Soviet peace plan for the Middle East-even if the two superpowers could agree on joint proposals...
Diplomatic Illness. What with the immense diversity of the Moslem world, the delegates had trouble joining one another just to talk. In the gaudy ballroom of the government-owned Rabat Hilton sat such disparate types as Saudi Arabia's conservative King Feisal, the moderate Shah of Iran and Algeria's strongman Houari Boumedienne. Host Hassan neatly averted the problem of sitting alongside an old enemy, Mauritania's President Moktar Ould Daddah, by having his placard lettered "Kingdom of Morocco." That enabled him to move down seven places at the alphabetically arranged table...