EGYPT: No Doubts About Who's in Charge

• Share

(2 of 3)

He was not surprised by his abrupt removal from al Ahram. "I knew it was inevitable. But I felt that if I didn't speak out, I would be betraying my profession. Now I have expressed my viewpoint, and I have taken the consequences."

As surprising as Heikal's discharge was Sadat's choice of a successor. The job went to Ali Amin, 59, former co-publisher with his twin brother Mustafa of the rival al Akhbar, who only last month returned to Egypt from a nine-year self-imposed exile I in London. Amin, often attacked as too pro-Western, had refused to come home as a protest against the imprisonment of his brother by Nasser on charges of handing over state secrets to the CIA. Mustafa Amin was recently freed on Sadat's orders, together with a number of political prisoners. Among them was former War Minister Mohammed Fawzi, jailed in 1971 for allegedly attempting to overthrow Sadat.

The ease with which Sadat could topple Heikal or free old conspirators indicates how much popularity Egypt's placid President now enjoys. Sadat has skillfully neutralized all of the political opponents who challenged him for power in the hiatus that followed Nasser's death. But what finally propelled him to his current eminence was Egypt's successful prosecution of the October War with Israel. Sadat has now begun to utilize that power both at home and outside Egypt.

Broad Mover. Domestically, Sadat intends to alter Egypt's economic stance in order to help a population that stands at 36 million and increases by 750,000 more every year. For the past year, he has been both President and Premier, but he is now ready to relinquish the premiership as part of a broad move to a peacetime economy. His aim is to temper Arab socialism with more Western-style free enterprise.

Sadat wants to attract not only Western capital but also the oil money flowing into the Arab world in rapidly increasing amounts. Foreign capital is being enticed by such moves as Sadat's recent decision to sign a World Bank agreement that protects foreign investors against losses from nationalization. Plans have been drawn up to turn Port Said into a free-trade zone and make it "the Hong Kong of the West." Cairenes, accustomed to seeing photographs of their President posing with visiting Arab and Soviet politicians, were astonished last week to see him greeting Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller, in Cairo to execute an $80 million loan for Egypt's proposed Sumed pipeline and also to arrange for new offices there.