The possibility that the growing Chinese-Russian conflict may result in a serious reduction of Soviet aid to the Arab states is causing concern to Arab leaders, the Christian Science Monitor reported Tuesday from Beirut.
“Arab leaders are wondering whether the growing Sino-Soviet conflict will seriously reduce Moscow’s support to its Arab friends in the Middle East,” Monitor correspondent John K. Cooley reported. He asserted that “there is evidence that the Russians are asking President Nasser and other Arab leaders to exercise extreme caution.”
Moscow, he said, “appears specially concerned” over the latest flare-up in the Suez Canal area. This concern, aired in Pravda on July 6, “has been reiterated in recent days by Soviet diplomats in Arab capitals,” Mr. Cooley asserted.
The correspondent declared that “the possibility of having to fight Communist China in central and east Asia, while at the same time having to confront Israel’s Western protector, the United States, at Asia’s Western end raises an old spectre of Russian policy — a war on two fronts.”
He added that “analysts here believe Soviet diplomats now are trying to make Arab policy makers understand that Moscow must avoid this at all costs, and that Peking, not the West, now is the main threat.”
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