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S.C.U.A. remains loose and only mildly binding, but it provides the canal users with a body that can negotiate with Nasser, move on to other concerted action should he block the canal or prove unable to keep it open. It does this in a manner that avoids, so far, acts that plunge the Suez crisis into full deadlock, yet leaves the Westerners free to keep moving, keep trying to make time work for them instead of for Nasser. "Nasser," explained one Lancaster House diplomat, "is facing in the long run a whole series of develop ments which will affect the Egyptian economy. His economy is deteriorating now. The long term is going to weigh more heavily than the fact that there will still be a lot of traffic in the canal. You don't always have to wait until it actually works, either, for often you get results when people see that it is going to work." Whether or not Nasser already saw that it was going to work, he showed at least a few signs of uneasiness. In Cairo drugs, cigarettes and whisky disappeared from counters, and merchants tucked rare items away for special customers. The official newspaper Al Shaab proclaimed: "We must now prepare for economic war." And there was restive stirring among Nasser's Arab supporters. In Saudi Arabia King Saud invited his old enemy King Feisal of Iraq to Dammam, presumably to discuss their mutual worries over the cost of Western displeasure to their oil revenues. At week's end Nasser hastily left Cairo for Dammam to confer with Saud and Syria's President Kuwatly. By happenstance, that great compromiser and neutralist Jawaharlal Nehru was flying in from India on a long-scheduled visit, might or might not confer with Nasser in the palace of the Arabian King.
Deflated Tires. With the terms set, all but three of the 18 nations—Iran, Pakistan, and Ethiopia—indicated that they would join S.C.U.A., although not altogether happily. For both Britain's Eden and France's Mollet, the agreement represented a climb-down—though from an admittedly unsteady perch. In Britain the Tory press was outraged. The Daily Mail charged that Dulles had pulled the rug from under Britain's feet. The august Times wrote: "Mr. Dulles soon deflated the tires of the new vehicle. The plan has been changed and weakened out of all recognition." France was even more irate. French officials talked of "sellout" and "bitter deception" and blamed the U.S. Said the usually neutralist-minded Le Monde: "If it is grave to go to Munich, it is even more so to go there after having sworn a hundred times to do the opposite." Premier Guy Mollet, who only six weeks before had told the cheering Assembly that "we shall impose" international control on Nasser if he persisted in his rejection of it, urgently telephoned Foreign Minister Christian Pineau in London and ordered him to refuse to sign. After an emergency Cabinet meeting Saturday to hear Pineau's report, Mollet announced that France would join S.C.U.A. only with the explicit reservation that "France intends to conserve her liberty of action."