The Plotter

The little tailor's apprentice who shot down Jordan's King Abdullah in Jerusalem last month was obviously only a triggerman. Who were the plotters who had sent him on his mission?

Last week, Jordan police thought they had the answer. They arrested eight men, charged them with planning the assassination. Among the subjects: an Arab-born Roman Catholic priest in Jerusalem who is a fanatical Arab nationalist; and three blood relatives of Jerusalem's intrigue-loving Mufti.

Thus the bloody trail seemed to lead, at least indirectly, to Egypt, and a brown three-story villa off Avenue Fuad in Cairo's exclusive Heliopolis suburb. There, in exile, guarded by the Egyptian police of his friend King Farouk, plus ten Palestinian toughs, sits the Mufti, the Middle East's greatest malcontent and plotter. The Mufti hated Abdullah because he had counted on Abdullah's arms to whip the Jews, whereupon the Mufti would take over all Palestine. Instead, Abdullah made peace with the Jews and personally annexed parts of Palestine to his tiny kingdom.

Last week, his greatest adversary eliminated, the Mufti schemed to wipe out his adversary's country itself. He met secretly in Cairo's Semiramis Hotel with the Foreign Ministers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, both oldtime opponents of Abdullah and the British. They agreed on a plan to tack Jordan on to a Greater Syria. In this way they would put a finish to

(1) Jordan's British-trained Arab Legion, best fighting force in the Middle East, which has consistently opposed the Mufti,

(2) Britain's old scheme for uniting Jordan with Iraq into a single, pro-British kingdom that would dominate the Arab world. The Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister was sent to London to sell the plan. Britain would be promised bases in the new Greater Syria. If it rejected the plan (as it undoubtedly would), the Middle East might lapse back into terrorism.

As the talk went on, the Mufti's men passed out word that there would be a six weeks' moratorium on killings. After that, if the Mufti & Co. did not get their way, violence would start up again. Likely first target: John Bagot Glubb, the Briton who heads the Arab Legion.

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