Soviet-egyptian Talks Tough; Nasser Wants More Arms, Soviets Trying to Avoid Brink

The talks between Egyptian and Soviet leaders in Moscow have been “extremely tough,” diplomatic sources say, with President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt refusing to give an inch on his stand against Israel and demanding more and more sophisticated Soviet arms and the Kremlin triumvirate urging a political compromise. What will probably emerge, the sources say, will be a modified package plan for a Middle East settlement that neither accepts nor rejects the American peace initiative. No official statement is expected until Col. Nasser returns home by week’s end, by which time he will have been away from Cairo for three weeks–an unusually long absence considering the rising tension in the Mideast. The Nasser-Kremlin consultations were said by sources to be involving mutual “arm-twisting,” with the former seeking a total Soviet takeover of her defenses preparatory to a military showdown with Israel and the latter seeking to avoid “being pushed over the brink” into a confrontation with the United States. Egypt is said to be blueprinting a major strike across the Suez Canal (using her newly acquired Soviet amphibious equipment) to establish a West Bank bridgehead and permit the USSR to reopen the waterway. Sources said the Kremlin had not realized what it was getting into when it undertook its military aid to Egypt either under severe Arab pressure or on the advice of the Soviet military or by simple miscalculation.