MIDDLE EAST: Anniversary Plot

The anniversary of his revolution, July 23, 1952, is one of President Nasser's great occasions. At last year's Cairo blowout, he announced seizure of the Suez Canal Co. This year he planned to inaugurate the first session of his new one-party Parliament, and his followers hoped for new excitements.

One came just a few days before the anniversary; the government announced that it had been holding 14 Egyptians in jail since April for plotting the dictator's assassination. According to the Information Ministry, a group of officers, ''cashiered for reasons connected with their military conduct" in last November's Anglo-French-Israeli invasion, planned to break in on a Cabinet meeting, bump off everybody, and install a civilian regime headed by Mohammed Salah el Din, 55, Foreign Minister in the last Wafdist government, before Nasser's 1952 revolution.

Long one of Egypt's most popular political figures, Salah el Din became something of a national hero by leading the successful drive in 1951 for Egypt's abrogation of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. As a leading Cairo lawyer, he has never concealed his distaste for the Nasser regime; he spoke out before the National Bar Association in 1954 for a return to democratic processes, and was duly denounced by Nasser for "treachery." But from his jail cell he denied that he had endorsed any plot on Nasser's life. The government said that all 14 "traitors" would be tried by military court.