WEST GERMANY: Trade, Not Aid

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West Germany joined last week in the West's cautious advance toward getting along better with Gamal Abdel Nasser. Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard signed a bilateral agreement guaranteeing German exporters up to $100 million in shipments to the United Arab Republic.

While Nasser junketed through Soviet Russia, his press grandly proclaimed that the German "loan," along with an earlier $175 million Soviet credit, would enable Egypt to fulfill its five-year plan in three years.

Actually, Bonn had not granted the Arabs any credit at all in the usual sense of the word. Under Erhard's policy of guaranteeing exports to underdeveloped countries, German firms which intend to do business in the "regions" of Egypt or Syria may submit their plans to Bonn for approval. They must finance their own shipments; only if the U.A.R. should fail to pay would the guarantee operate. For Cairo's ambitious list of factories, bridges and port projects, the West German government would promise only to provide technical advice and training.

Bonn also turned down the Egyptian demand to buy more Egyptian cotton; West Germany's textile factories still seem to get as much Egyptian cotton as they need by buying at cut-rate prices from the Soviet-bloc countries, which got the cotton from Egypt in payment for Red arms to Nasser.