Word: waterways
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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...
...Suez city, the Red Sea terminus of the great waterway, workers swarmed over docks and piers that had been empty for years. Buoys were being assembled, and pilot ships recaulked and overhauled. In the freshly painted warehouses, piles of new, sweet-smelling hemp rope rose like giant becalmed cobras in spirals to the ceilings. Canal pilots, the skilled men who guide ships through the narrow canal, were flocking back from all over the world. The Suez Canal, once the vital link between the West and the East, was being prepared for this week's gala reopening, eight years...
...task of readying the canal kept an international team busy for more than a year removing the detritus of two full-scale wars and a war of attrition. As the first step, U.S. Navy Sea Stallion helicopters towed minesweeping sleds the entire length of the waterway, searching for magnetic sea mines. The Israelis refused to say whether or not they had planted any, but none were found. Next, teams from the U.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, France and Egypt cleared out land mines, bombs, antitank mines, cluster bombs and anything else that might have accidentally fallen into the water...
...money may prove to be well spent. A 19th century biographer of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat who completed the canal in 1869, said that the waterway "traced for civilization a pacific and productive route across the sands of the desert." It also saved mercantile countries huge sums in shipping charges. Closing the canal has cost an estimated $10 billion in the extra expense of sending goods around Africa's southern tip. By the end of this week, when the first convoy starts north from Suez city, ships traveling from the Persian Gulf will be able...
...anniversary of its closing during the 1967 war. Sadat's declaration drew a cool response from the Israelis. "It means nothing to Israel," snapped Premier Yitzhak Rabin, since the Egyptian leader declared that Israeli cargoes could not be transported, even in ships of neutral nations, through the reopened waterway...