Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser warned his people yesterday that the United States may want to attach strings to further economic aid to Egypt. At the same time, he again denounced Tunisia’s President Habib Bourguiba for proposing Arab-Israeli peace talks, according to dispatches received here today.
In a May Day speech at a Cairo worker’s rally, and over television, Nasser threw down the gauntlet to the United States, implying that washington wants to condition further aid on terms which he did not specify. As for Bourguiba, he charged that Western Powers are “encouraging Israel to launch aggression” by supplying arms to Israel.
From Tunis it was reported today that President Bourguiba had sent a lengthy letter to Nasser, seeking to meet with the Egyptian leader to discuss their differences. At the same time, however, President Bourguiba declared in an address at Sfax, Tunisia, that Nasser is “seeking to make himself the unchallenged master of the Arab world.” Asserting that the proposals he had made thus far vis-a-vis Arab-Israeli peace talks were only “provisional,” Bourguiba said he felt free to voice his own solutions and was “not prepared to surrender Tunisian sovereignty to anyone.”
In Algiers, President Anmed Ben Bella said yesterday that he favors a “peaceful solution” to the Palestine problem, provided that “solution” meant “the disappearance of Israel.” He stated that, if necessary, Algeria would go to war “to liberate Palestine.”
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