Foreign News: The Successors

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What next in Jordan? The Council of State hastily picked Abdullah's younger son, short, stocky 35-year-old Prince Naif (rhymes with life) to be regent. Naif, his father's favorite, educated at Victoria College, Alexandria, adopted Abdullah's pro-British opinions, but he seems to lack the old man's intuition, statesmanship and drive. He is more interested in soldiering and women than in the business of governing.

Normally, Abdullah's successor would be his eldest son, Prince Talal, 40, a Sandhurst man. But dark, brooding Talal seems nervously unbalanced, is given to violent outbreaks (mostly about the British, whom he dislikes), is currently in a Geneva sanatorium for treatment. He has periods of rationality during which he can be charming, but when he is caught with a fit of unaccountable anger he can be dangerous. Recently, when his wife gave birth to a daughter, he tried to kill the mother and child because, he said, it was a crime to bring children into a disordered world. Reportedly, he once slapped the respected face of Glubb Pasha, British head of Abdullah's Arab Legion, for contradicting him in front of his father; another time, he threatened to kill Glubb. A Hashemite family conference, with the British kibitzing, will probably decide whether Talal is fit to rule, or whether his son, Emir Hussein, 15, will be King.