A Page Is Turned

At 11 o'clock one morning last week, perhaps the best news from the Middle East in years issued from the ornate cabinet room in Cairo's presidency: Egypt and Britain had reached an amicable solution of their half-century-old dispute over the Sudan. By its terms, Britain will quit the million-square-mile area (one-third the size of the U.S.), and allow the 8,000,000 Sudanese to decide their own political future. "A new page has been turned in the relations between Egypt and the United Kingdom," cried Egypt's Strongman Mohammed Naguib, "a page that restores confidence and augurs well." "A new era of friendship," agreed Britain's Ambassador Sir Ralph Stevenson.

"Mabruk, Mabruk!" (congratulations), murmured Stevenson and Naguib to each other as they signed the blue-paged agreement. Naguib, his face a picture of glee (see cut), held aloft the fountain pen and said: "I will send it to the museum." Newsmen and photographers hugged and bussed him; guards, overcome with emotion, bent to kiss his hand, were told sharply: "Give me a strong handshake. That would be better." From Washington came a strong handshake: "This Government is highly gratified."

Union Jack & Crescent. Half a century ago a cocky and flamboyant young British journalist named Winston Churchill wrote: "The Sudan is naturally and geographically an integral part of Egypt." The Egyptians thought so too.

Greedy for gold, slaves and ivory, Egypt's "liberator," Mohammed Ali, conquered the Sudan in 1820 and began 60 years of maladministration and slaving. (To this day, the Egyptian gutter name for Sudanese is "Abid," which means the slaves.) In 1882, rotting Egypt burst apart; the British moved into Egypt proper, and a religious fakir, calling himself El Mahdi (The Messiah), took the Sudan. Famed General "Chinese" Gordon, an Englishman employed by the Egyptians, tried a holding operation in Khartoum, but died on the steps of his headquarters, a human pincushion for dervish spears.

Thirteen years later, in 1898, General Horatio Kitchener avenged Gordon. He led a combined Anglo-Egyptian force of 25,000 (one of whom was Subaltern Winston Churchill) up the Nile, shattered 40,000 dervishes and Fuzzy-Wuzzies at Omdurman, razed the Mahdi's tomb and regained the Sudan. But for whom?

The British raised the Union Jack and Egypt's Crescent side by side over Khartoum, and proclaimed a weird device for joint British-Egyptian government called the Condominium. It was a formality only; the British ruled, the Egyptians did little more than pay some of the bills. In 1924 the British threw the remaining troops of their "copartner" out of the Sudan; 16 months ago, the Egyptians got equally fed up. They denounced the Condominium and proclaimed Egypt's sovereignty over the Sudan; the nationalists' outcry for the Sudan moved from Cairo's streets into the world's chancelleries.

Moslem Majority. A series of triple plays made last week's agreement possible. The Sudan will reach freedom in three stages: 1) countrywide elections for a Sudanese parliament; 2) formation of a Sudanese government; 3) the Sudanese to decide, within three years, whether to join Egypt or remain independent. (Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden assured the House of Commons that Sudan could decide to join the British Commonwealth.)

Three commissions, mutually agreeable to Egypt and Britain, will police the operation. The most important one is a commission which during the transition may veto acts of British Governor General Sir Robert Howe, uncrowned monarch of the Sudan. Two Sudanese, an Egyptian, an Englishman and a Pakistani will form the commission; thus it will have a Moslem majority--a concession by the British, who had long argued that the 2,000,000 half-clad, ignorant natives of the South Sudan had to be protected against the Arab majority in the north.

Three men made the settlement possible: Naguib, Stevenson, and the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, Jefferson Caffery. Taciturn, levelheaded, 66-year-old Caffery, dean of the U.S. Foreign Service (he was chief of a mission back in Hoover's Administration), was the honest broker for the great diplomatic triumph. Naguib last week paid him a well-earned tribute: "It was through Ambassador Caffery's good offices that many difficult points were ironed out." Some old-style British imperialists were horrified by the agreement, arguing that it was one more British retreat, like India, Burma and Abadan.

Nonetheless, if Britain had made concessions, so had Naguib. It was through his statesmanlike decision last November, at a time when his countrymen were inflamed against the British, that Egypt for the first time recognized the Sudan's right to self-determination. He also withdrew Egypt's paralyzing refusal to negotiate over the Sudan until British forces evacuated Suez.

In fact, an agreement over Suez should be the next beneficial step. Still to be decided is the form of Britain's withdrawal from its Suez Canal Zone base, jampacked with $1 billion worth of forts, barracks, flying fields and radar--and 50,000 troops. The quid for Britain's quo would be Egypt's willingness to join Britain, the U.S., France and Turkey in a Middle East Defense Organization, pledged to the defense, not only of the canal, but of the entire Eastern Mediterranean.

Naguib capped his triumphant week with a satisfying announcement: he plans to visit the U.S. "in the very near future."

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