Rabat Arab Summit Failure Viewed As Major Defeat for Nasser

Israeli diplomatic circles said today that the failure of the Arab summit conference at Rabat, Morocco, was first and foremost a failure of President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, to line up the other Arab states behind his war policy against Israel. The Rabat conference broke up yesterday in disarray, amid confusion and bitter recriminations among the participants and an admission by Col. Nasser that “it has produced nothing at all.”

The Israelis said the outcome at Rabat proved that the Western powers had attached too much importance to it in the first place and allowed themselves to be maneuvered into conciliatory positions toward the Arabs which proved unnecessary. A case in point, diplomatic sources here said, was the disclosure by Secretary of State William P. Rogers of the American proposal that Israel withdraw entirely from the Sinai Peninsula to the pre-June, 1967 borders. The Israeli Government claimed that this and other American proposals amounted almost to appeasement of the Arabs and undermined Israel’s bargaining position in any future negotiations. U.S. State Department officials acknowledged that Secretary Roger’s disclosure was aimed at softening the anti American polemics anticipated at the Rabat conference.

The Israelis said that Nasser went to Rabat with four objectives and failed to gain any of them. They were: the reassertion of Egyptian hegemony in the Arab world; support for the Palestinian terrorists from all Arab states; increased financial support from the oil-producing Arab states for Egypt’s war effort and an all-Arab plan for a new war against Israel.

According to report from Rabat, a row flared after Col. Nasser called on the Arab heads of state to pledge definite cash contributions to the Egyptian war plan. The issue apparently touched off the long-standing resentment between the conservative Arab states represented by oil rich Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and the Socialist-oriented “progressive” states. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia challenged Nasser to account for how he spent the money provided by Saudi Arabia since 1967. At that point, Col. Nasser stormed out of the meeting.

Nine of the Arab countries reportedly supported his war plan. Four wanted to study it further and Kuwait was neutral. Nasser told the conference that Egypt was bearing the brunt of attacks by Israel and demanded that each Arab nation spell out what it was prepared to commit to the struggle. He reportedly quarreled bitterly with King Hussein of Jordan, who expressed a liking for the new American initiative which reportedly would return virtually the entire West Bank to Jordan and give Jordan a role in governing Jerusalem. The Syrian, Iraqi and Yemeni delegations boycotted the ceremonial closing session which was intended to put the best possible face on the abortive summit. Nasser departed for Tripoli for talks with the Libya’s leftist military junta on coordinated military, economic and social efforts. Yasser Arafat, the head of El Fatah and of the Palestine Liberation Organization that coordinates all guerrilla groups, told newsmen afterwards that all he got out of the Rabat conference was “love and sympathy.”