ARABS TO VOTE ON FEDERATION

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32700, 1 September 1971, Page 17

ARABS TO VOTE ON FEDERATION

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) CAIRO, August 31. Half the population of the Arab world 43 million people in three countries were preparing today for a vote on Arab unity after being urged to give massive support to the proposed federation of Arab States.

The leaders of Egypt, Syria and Libya’ have prepared their people for tomorrow’s threenation referendum with speeches emphasising the importance of the federation in the fight against Israel

Egypt’s leader, President Anwar Sadat, said in a radio and television broadcast last night that the federation would enable the Arabs to carry out a new strategy against Israel. It had already aroused misgivings among Israeli leaders, he said.

In Damascus, the Syrian President, Dr Hafez al-Assad, said in a simultaneous speech that by voting in the referendum Syrians would be "laying a strong foundation of serious united action to achieve total Arab unity .. The federation’s third

founder, the Libyan Head of State, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, has been touring his country promoting the federation at rallies.

Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the Libyan revolution in which Colonel Gaddafi overthrew the monarchy. Among the foreign dignitaries in Tripoli for the celebrations will be Major-Gen-eral Jaafar el-Nimeiry, President of the Sudan, a' prospective fourth member of the federation.

The Sudanese are expected to join early next year, bringing together more than 50 million people in an area covering more than two million square miles. A constitution, approved and signed by the three Presidents earlier this month provides for the admission of other Arab republics which believe in Arab imity and which adopt socialism as a basis for their governments. This clearly rules out the Arab world’s three monarchies Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. President Sadat, in his speech last night, emphasised

that the federation was closed to the Jordanians. “Jordan is out of the battle, finished,” he declared. “It’s armed forces are massed against Syria, not against Israel,” '