Since President Carter’s recent trip to Cairo and Tel Aviv, one of the key questions has been whether Saudi Arabia will cut off aid to Egypt in pursuance of the Baghdad summit resolution which calls for an end to economic assistance to it if and when President Sadat finally signs a separate peace treaty with Israel. And it has been widely speculated that the Saudi rulers are caught in a cruel dilemma which they cannot easily resolve. For, on the one hand, they cannot ignore the strong anti-Sadat sentiment in the Arab world and thereby invite trouble for themselves and, on the other, they cannot be insensitive to their dependence on the United States for their security. Mr. Brzezinski’s failure to win Saudi support for the Israeli-Egyptian treaty and the supply of US arms by the United States to North Yemen at Riyadh’s instance have spotlighted these two contradictory aspects of Saudi Arabian policy and reinforced the above impression that the Saudi rulers will be hard put to it to reconcile them. But this may not turn out to be the case. At least so it appears from an interview Prince Fahd, Saudi Arabia’s strong man, has given to the Newsweek magazine.
The interview is remarkable for the dignity and the diplomatic skill Prince Fahd has displayed in dealing with extremely tough questions in a very difficult situation. But it is his firm commitment of continuing aid to Egypt that makes it particularly significant. The correspondent, Mr. Arnaud Borchgrave, has quoted the Prince as having told him that Saudi Arabia does not propose to cut assistance to Egypt and that instead the Saudi plan is to end its contribution to multilateral Arab aid to Cairo as agreed upon in Khartoum and Rabat after the end of the 1965 and 1973 wars and replace them with bilateral assistance. And that, too, is not the end of the matter. When Mr. Borchgrave asked Prince Fahd whether Saudi support to Cairo is contingent on the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty “being firmly linked to Palestinian solution and further Israeli withdrawal,” the latter replied: “The Saudi government’s relationship with Egypt does not hinge on a single linkage. We have proven this in the past. We are deeply concerned about the welfare of all Arab countries.” The Prince has also not been unappreciative of President Carter’s efforts — he has called them “incessant and enormous” and expressed “deep thanks and appreciation” for them — in persuading Israel to withdraw from the Sinai. Only, he said, “even bigger efforts will now be required to secure Israeli withdrawal from all occupied territories, including Arab Jerusalem.” Finally, he has been non-committal on the question of establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and while he is opposed to the establishment of direct US naval presence in the region, he has expressed the hope that America will provide the necessary hardware for countries like Saudi Arabia to fill the power vacuum created by the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. This neat compromise may not work. But that is a different problem. The Saudis have a policy and it is a fairly consistent one. If it works — it means that President Sadat survives in Cairo and the Saudi regime does not come under intolerable pressure — the United States will perhaps have pulled off a major victory. President Carter is planning virtually a new alliance system based on Israel and Egypt with Saudi Arabia playing a big supporting role. It is an ambitious project, the most ambitious since Mr. John Foster Dulles failed to rope President Nasser into a pro-Western military alliance, and the odds against it are heavy. But its collapse should not be taken for granted.
The Times of India, 23 March 1979