| OCR Text |
Show At the same time, there has been steady improvement in the relations between the United Arab Republic and some Arab states known to be friendly to the West. A systematic policy, on the part of the United Arab Republic, of initiating and promoting cordial relations with those countries, has been unfolding itself. Thus, following the meeting last spring between Presidents Nasser and Chehab, a number of outstanding problems between Lebanon and the U.A.R., including questions of finance, transit of goods and persons, and tourism, were resolved; and an omnibus agreement was reached during the visit of Prime Minister Karami to Cairo in June. Diplomatic relations between Jordan and the U. A.R. have been resumed. By the end of August, the healing of the eighteen-month-old feud between President Nasser and the King of Saudi Arabia was so advanced that King Saud received a hero's welcome during his state visit to Cairo. In the meantime, less spectacular changes were occuring elsewhere. Cordial relations with Morocco were further advanced by the visit of high-ranking Moroccan dignitaries, including the Crown Prince, to Cairo. Strains in the relations between the U.A.R. and the Sudan have been considerably reduced since the advent of General Abboud to power. Although relations between the United Arab Republic and Tunisia did not undergo similar improvement, efforts have nonetheless been made to settle outstanding differences between the two countries. There is, in short, an unmistakable trend in inter-Arab relations, parallel to the trend in Arab-Western relations, towards steady rapprochement between the United Arab Republic arid those Arab Governments whose relations with the West -- diplomatic, military, political, and economic -- have been in recent years happier than U.A.R. - Western relations. If we recall that, in the recent past, frictions between the U.A.R. and one or another of these Arab Governments have at times engendered, and at other times resulted from, frictions between the U.A.R. and the West, we will perhaps detect some essential correlation between the two trends " . which began to take shape soon after the severe crisis in intra-Arab and in Arab- Western relations of the summer of 1958 came to an end. |
