DIPLOMACY: A Triumphant Middle East Hegira

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To the Top. When the train reached Alexandria, Nixon got a reception even more boisterous and friendly than the one he had experienced in Cairo. A million or more people crammed the sidewalks, perched on the sea walls and crowded the balconies of the sprawling, seedy old Mediterranean city to cheer as the President passed by on his ten-mile motorcade. Lines of policemen on motorcycles flanked the presidential limousine, and four Jeeps full of troops armed with automatic rifles followed the Secret Service car in the procession.

That night, at the dinner he gave for Sadat at the Ras el Tin Palace, the President basked in the memory of his remarkable reception in Alexandria. "There is an old saying," Nixon told Sadat, "that you can turn people out but you can't turn them on. There was no question about the people that we saw yesterday and today—they were from their hearts giving us a warm welcome —and I can assure you, Mr. President, they touched our hearts, and I am sure the hearts of millions of Americans who saw that welcoming on television."

The next morning, the Nixons and the Sadats whirled off by helicopter for a brief look at the pyramids ("After we are done," Nixon joked to Sadat, "the press corps can climb to the top"), and Pat toured a nearby children's center, displaying all of the warm grace that she has shown during similar visits across the U.S. and around the world.

While the ceremonies were going on and the surging thousands were chanting their names, Presidents Nixon and Sadat were getting down to some hard bargaining that went beyond what their advisers had anticipated. First, they agreed to try to set up a round-robin of talks between the U.S., the Soviet Union and the various Arab countries before going ahead with full-scale discussions in Geneva aimed at reaching a general peace in the Middle East. Israel would not participate in the preliminary talks.

On the third and last day of the visit, the two Presidents announced a wide-ranging agreement that brought Egypt and the U.S. closer together than ever before—but will pose delicate problems for Nixon when he visits Israel this week. The President promised to try to provide Egypt with nuclear reactors and the know-how to operate atomic-power stations by the early 1980s. The main catch: working out a foolproof safeguard system to guarantee that the Egyptians could not use the nuclear equipment to make atomic weapons. The prospect of the Arabs' getting nuclear help from the U.S. raised immediate alarm in Israel and in the U.S. Congress. Democratic Senator Frank Church declared that Nixon had gone "beyond propriety" in making the agreement, and Democratic Congressman Melvin Price, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, predicted that his group would have to hold thorough hearings to make sure that the safeguard measures were really foolproof before Congress would approve the step.

Without naming a figure, Nixon also promised to give the Egyptians economic, scientific, medical and technical aid, as well as to work out cultural exchange programs and to encourage American business to invest in Egypt. At the moment, ventures worth $2 billion are under discussion. Sadat accepted an invitation from Nixon to visit the U.S. later this year.