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Soviet Government Presents Model Jet Plane As Gift to Nasser

May 22, 1956
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Egyptian Premier Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser will be presented with a Soviet Ilyushin 14 jet plane as a gift by the Soviet Ambassador tomorrow. The plane is the same type used by Soviet leaders Bulganin and Khrushchev on their recent trips abroad.

An officer of Radio Cairo withdrew last night a report broadcast earlier by the station to the effect that Egypt and Poland had signed an agreement under which the Communist state would sell arms to the Arab state. In a dispatch received here from Cairo, the station official is quoted as saying that the report of the agreement was withdrawn because it “apparently was a mistake.” At the Polish Embassy in Cairo, an Embassy spokesman said that Poland had trade pacts with Egypt but not an arms agreement.

(In Washington it was reported that intelligence reports reaching the United States capital had placed total Egyptian arms contracts with Czechoslovakia at $250,000,000. The pact of last September has been followed by two or possibly three others, the reports said.)

An Egyptian newsman newly returned from a legal visit to Israel declared today Israel is aiming, with American backing, at economic domination of the Middle East. The newsman is Ibrahim Izzat, diplomatic correspondent for the Cairo weekly Rose al Youssef. He is the first Egyptian to enter Israel on a non-war mission since the Jewish State was founded in 1948.

The Egyptian journalist reported in his first article today that the Arab boycott in effect since the Palestine war of 1948 was essential for protection of the Arabs against Israeli dumping. He wrote that “the day Israel is permitted to smell the air in the Arab states”–by the lifting of the boycott–it would start a dumping program sufficient to kill any Arab local industry.

Describing Israeli industry as flourishing and expanding, largely supported by American capital, Mr. Izzat said: “All this greatness in Israeli industry and this huge industrial effort point to one target–to pave the way for economic domination of the Middle East. But this effort is not Israeli alone. It is really an American aim working through Israel.

“Peace with Egypt is the hope, dream and target of every Israeli from Premier David Ben Gurion down,” the Egyptian journalist wrote, “but this hope does not reduce Israeli preparations for an offensive.” He added that there were “wide-scale preparations for war and incessant military movements in Israel.”

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