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But the persistent strains within the Arab world were also glaringly evident, and it is virtually certain that a summit meeting proposed for Algiers will have to be canceled. Observing angrily that Morocco and Libya were separated "by not only a desert of sand but by a desert of the intellect," Hassan placed a guard around the Libyan embassy. Gaddafi retaliated by breaking off diplomatic relations. Hassan, irritated by an early story in Cairo's Al Ahram supporting the rebels, kept an Egyptian emissary cooling his heels in Rabat for two days before seeing him.
Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, anxious to maintain a reasonably united Arab front as the threat grows of a renewed war of attrition with Israel, sent his congratulations to Hassan on surviving the mutiny. He also flew to the western Egyptian town of Mersa Matruh to try to calm the excitable Gaddafi, whose caches of oil money and revolutionary zeal have begun to worry other Arabs. Gaddafi reportedly bankrolled the successful campaign of Malta's leftist political leader Dom Mintoff, who ran on an anti-NATO, anti-West platform. If the Libyan leader would do that for Malta, others fear, he might send paid provocateurs into conservative Arab countries, especially since Gaddafi sees himself as the successor to Gamal Abdel Nasser as leader of the Arab world.
Sadat's hopes of maintaining at least the facade of unity suffered another blow when Hussein's army began a new drive on Palestinian guerrillas camped at Jerash, 30 miles north of Amman. With tanks and artillery the army drove the guerrillas out of their last town into barren, waterless territory in the Jordan Valley. Displeased by the King's action, Sadat asked him to cancel a scheduled visit to Cairo this week because, he explained, Egyptian officialdom would simply be too busy celebrating the 19th anniversary of Farouk's fall to give Hussein the sort of welcome he deserved.