The Tunisian Embassy in Cairo was bombarded today with stones and rocks by about 200 Egyptian students as an expression of protest against the urging of Arab-Israel peace talks by President Bourguiba of Tunisia. The attack on the Embassy building took place following two days of bitter agitation against Bourguiba’s peace negotiations proposals in the Egyptian press.
Al Ahram, of Cairo, usually considered the voice of Egypt’s President Nasser, accused the Tunisian President of “a stab in the back of the people of Palestine.” An editorial in the newspaper, reportedly written by Mobammed Hassanein Heykal, a confidant of President Nasser, indicated that at the next meeting of Arab prime ministers, scheduled to be held next month, Egypt would force the other Arab states to choose between Bourguiba and Nasser.
The editorial also indicated that Egypt might refuse to attend the meeting of Arab leaders scheduled to be held in Morocco next September, if Bourguiba were to participate in that parley. It rejected the Bourguiba thesis of a possible compromise between the Arab countries and Israel, and hinted that Egypt would not trust Bourguiba to the extent of disclosing to a meeting which he attends any of Cairo’s military secrets.
In Beirut, the newspaper Al Hoharrer, whose policy has been pro-Nasserite, published a cartoon picturing Bourguiba as a “Judas” carrying 30 pieces of silver, while Palestine dies on the cross. But another Beirut newspaper, the independent Al Jarida, stated that Bourguiba had introduced no new element into the Arab stand on Palestine, and that “all he wanted was to get the Palestine question moving again at the level of the United Nations.”
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