Fog over Suez

For the first time since he inherited Gamal Abdel Nasser's mantle as President of Egypt and leader of the Arab world, Anwar Sadat last week was subjected to massive public criticism by his fellow countrymen. At the vast (64,000 enrollment) University of Cairo, more than 6,000 angry undergraduates jammed into the school's auditorium, hoisted placards reading WE MUST FIGHT, and vowed to carry on the protest until Sadat showed up to answer their questions about foreign policy--particularly, the course of the war with Israel.

The students had been provoked by a massive reshuffle of the Egyptian Cabinet, which appeared to them to beg the issues, and a heavily publicized television speech by Sadat in which he ineptly explained away his repeated promise that 1971 would be Egypt's "year of decision." It would have been. Sadat said lamely, except that the India-Pakistan war "drew the attention of the entire world and became a battle of the big powers, affecting our battle" and preventing him from going to war.

Sadat went on to draw a ludicrous analogy between his bad luck and that of his predecessor ("May God rest his soul") in 1967. A month after the end of the Six-Day War, said Sadat, an Israeli armored brigade was sighted edging up to the Suez Canal in what looked like an attempt to cross it. Nasser ordered Egyptian bombers to crush the supposed attack. "Unfortunately," Sadat explained, "they were unable to spot their targets because of fog that had gathered over the whole area. The fog spoiled everything."

Even the most gullible of Egyptians found that hard to swallow; seldom if ever has the Suez had any fog in the blistering month of July, when the otherwise unrecorded incident supposedly took place. Round the capital, Sadat's TV appearance quickly became known as the "Fog Speech." Three days after it was delivered, a professor at the Ein Shams University in suburban Heliopolis sarcastically lectured at a student meeting about "fog over Egypt." Hundreds of Ein Shams' 38,000 students rapidly took part in teach-ins. Before long, protests spread across town to Cairo University, where vocal students criticized the government's waste, political inaction and willingness to let American oil companies operate in Egypt even as the U.S. delivers additional Phantom jets to Israel.

By themselves, the students could not sway or topple an Egyptian government; Sadat sarcastically retorted to their demands for war by suggesting that they all join the army. But the President was also aware that the protesters were symptomatic of national frustration after nearly five years of no war, no peace, and that other Egyptians were having the same sort of doubts.

Obviously the restlessness would not be satisfied by anything so illusory as a Cabinet shift. A few days before his speech, Sadat had pushed aside such eminent old guardsmen as Premier Mahmoud Fawzi, 71, who took the honorific post of vice president, and Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad, 55, who was named a foreign affairs adviser. The incoming Cabinet is composed of bright young technocrats with few ties back to Nasser and little political strength of their own. "Some are pro-this and some are pro-that," said an Israeli scrutinizing the list of new appointees. "The only thing that makes them alike is that they are all pro-Sadat."

Rosy Estimates. That description certainly fits new Premier Aziz Sidky, 51, who was the first Cabinet member to declare loyalty to Sadat last May after the President uncovered a plot to overthrow him. A graduate of Cairo U., the University of Oregon and Harvard, Sidky was elevated from Minister of Industry, a post in which he supervised the start-up of the Helwan Iron & Steel works and the Nasr auto works and often gave suspiciously rosy estimates of Egyptian productivity. As Premier he will concentrate on domestic affairs while Sadat reserves defense matters and foreign policy for himself.

In that capacity, Sadat's earliest decision must be what to do in the matter of negotiations with Israel, either through United Nations Mediator Gunnar Jarring or through the U.S.-proposed "hotel talks" (TIME. Dec. 13) involving an interim agreement to reopen the Suez Canal. Sadat is disillusioned about the U.S. role in the Middle East, but he still wants to negotiate; one reason Riad was replaced by former Ambassador to Moscow Murad Ghaleb, 50, is that he had become inflexibly hard-lining about the value of interim negotiations. Sadat may lose popular support if he negotiates without results; if on the other hand he fights, as the students demand, he will undoubtedly be beaten. If he choses neither course, he will be criticized as a do-nothing. That could also be dangerous. Cynics noted last week that as Premier, the ambitious Sidky is now a potential successor to Sadat as President.

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