Gamal Abdel Nasser declared open war on King Saud last week—the man whom he has often wooed in the past, whose oil moneys have helped fuel Nasser's subversions, whose army only two years ago was nominally put under a joint command headed by an Egyptian.
The declaration was neither a signed document nor a diplomatic ultimatum. But it was clear enough. It came when Nasser stepped onto his Damascus balcony, looked grandly out on the sea of cheering Arabs who have surrounded the guesthouse every day all day since he arrived two weeks ago, and charged that Saudi Arabia's King had plotted to overthrow the new United Arab Republic.
"Brothers," cried Nasser, "in such affairs it is difficult to produce documents, but this time we have them." As Syria's Intelligence Chief Lieut. Colonel Abdel Hamid Serraj hovered at his side, Nasser dramatically yanked a canceled check from a Manila envelope and shouted: "The first million was paid by Check No. 85902, drawn on the Arab Bank in Riyadh Feb. 20, 1958, payable to bearer and cashed at the Arab Bank branch in Damascus." Bearer, roared Nasser, was Serraj, who, as conscientious as he was vigilant, had accepted the check, then hurried to tell Nasser all about it. "We decided to nationalize it," said Nasser, and with a big grin, related how they coaxed Saud's agents into paying $5,600,000 of the promised $60 million in advance, and cashed the "money—oil money, to be used by us here for building heavy industry which will become the first pillar in our new five-year plan."
"The Building." Following Nasser's blast, Serraj met the press to relate a modern Arabian Nights tale, a sort of Scheherazade with photostats. The chunky, blue-chinned colonel, who also discovered a plot last summer when his government was closing an arms deal with Soviet Russia, said that Saud had approached him through one of Saud's fathers-in-law, Syrian-born Assad Ibrahim. According to Ibrahim, said Serraj, Saud considered Nasser's union "Egyptian imperialism," and had sworn "by his father's soul that this union shall not take place." Ibrahim forthwith offered Serraj financial and moral support for the Syrian presidency if Serraj would lead a coup.