Union Now

The Arab world last week reeled in a delirium of joy. Damascus Radio repeatedly shrieked, "Ahlan Bil Wahda!" (Welcome to union). When Syrian soldiers sent bursts of tracer bullets streaking against the night sky, the radio announcer hastily told his excited listeners that it was not revolution but jubilation. THE DREAM HAS COME TRUE! headlined a Beirut paper. Aleppo nearly exploded: its main streets became a sea of screaming humanity, and cars inched along honking their horns to the rhythm, "Nas-ser!"

Algeria's Premier Ahmed ben Bella cabled that this was "the most wonderful day of my life!" and Yemen's strongman. Abdullah Sallal. hailed the "outstanding historic event." Cheering crowds milled through Aden and Kuwait and Baghdad.

Festering Wound. What thrilled the Arab world was the Cairo announcement that Egypt, Syria and Iraq had at last agreed to unite in a tripartite federation. The terms of union were far stronger and more centralized than Arabs, or anyone else, had expected. There had been much talk of a loose association of nations moving slowly over the years toward actual unity. But the pulsing enthusiasm of the moment apparently swept aside much of the earlier restraint.

A few dozen men in Cairo were groping for the political blueprint for a nation stronger, richer and more powerful than any Arab state for centuries past. If it all works out, the proposed new Middle Eastern power complex will cover 620,300 sq. mi., stretch from the borders of Turkey and Iran to Sudan and Libya, from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean and far down the Red Sea coast. It would have a population of 40 million people (expected to reach 80 million by 1985, greater than the largest nation of Western Europe) and a total gross national product of $5.7 billion.

Hero of the hour was Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Better than any man, he knew that, on the historical record, the odds were against success. Time and again, the cherished dream of Arab oneness has been shattered on the irrationality of Arab behavior, on personal rivalries, ambitions, class differences and complicated Levantine intrigues. Amid shouts of Arab joy, Egypt and Syria forged the United Arab Republic in 1958, only to see it collapse in a welter of bickering three years later. During the past five weeks of negotiations in Cairo, rumors spread of wrangling and dissension between Nasser on one side and the Syrian and Iraqi leaders of the Socialist Baath Party on the other. Both picked at the "festering wound" caused by Baath's breakup of the earlier, ill-starred union of Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic. Each put the blame for failure on the other.

Finally, at a plenary session in the gilt-and-cream great hall of Kubbah Palace, Nasser proposed a sharing of guilt. "The presence of Baath in the Arab homeland is a necessity," he declared. "The resignation of the Baath ministers from the U.A.R. government in 1961 was a mistake. Accepting the resignations was also a mistake." The Baathist delegates clapped and cheered this burying of the hatchet. In a startlingly un-Arab spirit of amity and compromise, both sides accepted the other's good faith and minimum terms.

Cheerful Borrowing. The points of agreement announced by Egypt's Premier Ali Sabry include a federal state retaining the name of the United Arab Republic, with Cairo as its capital. All citizens would share one nationality, but each of the three regions would be self-governing and in control of its separate economy. The overall government based in Cairo would have a single President (almost certainly Nasser), a presidential council with members from each region and a bicameral legislature: a House with one member for each 60,000 citizens, and a Senate representing the regions equally without regard to population. The Arab press cheerfully admitted that much was borrowed from the U.S. Constitution because it provided the "ideal form of union as proven by experience."

Sticking point is Nasser's insistence on a single political party for the whole U.A.R., modeled on his own Arab Socialist Union in Egypt. Since this would swallow up and probably destroy the Baath movement, Baathists have held out for a looser, more representative system, including the Baath-created National Front in Iraq, and the Baathist-Nasserite Unionist Front in Syria. In the end, Nasser would probably have his way on this, as on other limitations to political democracy. A Cairo spokesman explained, in a phase definitely not borrowed from U.S. democracy, that "freedom will be guaranteed to the people, but not to the enemies of the people."

There are many lesser matters still to be decided. Committees would be assigned to work out details of currency, customs, postage, diplomatic and other policies. Foreign affairs would be under the new U.A.R. government, and embassies abroad would be merged. The U.A.R., however, may try to hang on to its three United Nations seats in much the same way that the Soviet Union controls the votes of the Ukraine and Byelorussia.

Freed Slaves. Many observers suspect that this new ship of state may go swiftly on the rocks, but few of them are in the Arab world. Twelve members of oil-rich Kuwait's 50-man legislature formally requested unity with the U.A.R. Even Nasser's traditional enemies, the monarchies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, made efforts at reconciliation. Jordan's King Hussein discreetly let 56 Nasserite and Baathist political prisoners out of jail and sent off friendly feelers to Nasser. In Saudi Arabia, alarmed by a pro-Nasser demonstration that cost 19 lives, Premier Prince Feisal tried to modernize his regime by allotting $1,200,000 as compensation to slave owners who would free their chattels.

At week's end Cairo Radio was spreading word of a cease-fire by mutual agreement in rebellion-torn Yemen. It said that Saudi Arabia was prepared to stop supplying the royalists supporting ex-Imam Badr with money and munitions, while Nasser may withdraw a token contingent of his 28,000-man Egyptian expeditionary force by April 20. Though Nasser's broadcasters are not the most reliable sources in the world, things may well come to this, for without doubt Jordan and Saudi Arabia--and all other Arabs--are becoming increasingly anxious to avoid angering Nasser.

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