Soviet, Egyptian Leaders Plan to Announce Conciliatory Attitude Toward U.S. Plan

The Kremlin tailors are measuring President Gamal Abdel Nasser for a new suit of armor but apparently are anxious that he should not wear it into a new war with Israel and lose the pants along with almost everything else as he did three years ago, one diplomatic observer here remarked today. The allusion was to signs of a slight shift in Soviet Mideast policy perceptible in Moscow during the Egyptian leader’s visit there this week. President Nasser arrived in the Soviet capital last Monday accompanied by a high-level entourage that included his Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad. His talks with Premier Alexei Kosygin, President Nikolai Podgorny and Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev were reportedly centered on new supplies of jet aircraft, missiles and other arms that Egypt wants from Russia. Diplomatic sources said a joint Soviet-Egyptian communique is expected tomorrow which will disclose that Soviet and Egyptian leaders have agreed that the new United States plan for Middle East peace contains some positive elements. The communique will be issued at the end of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s visit to the Soviet Union. According to reports reaching here from Moscow, an authoritative Middle East diplomatic source said that the Arabs have also indicated that they have found some positive elements in the latest U.S. peace proposals. These elements, according to the reports, include the call for the revival of Ambassador Gunnar V. Jarring’s Mideast peace mission, the support for the November 1967 United Nations Security Council’s resolution, and the American use of the term “Palestinians.” According to the reports, the use of that term, as the Arabs see it, means “Palestinians are now recognized by the United States as an entity or a nation.”