Shah quits Panama for Egypt to take up Sadat’s offer

Press, 25 March 1980, Page 8

Shah quits Panama for Egypt to take up Sadat’s offer

NZPA-Reuter Cairo The deposed Shah of Iran arrived in Cairo yesterday and was met by the Egyptian President (Mr Anwar Sadat).

The Shah was whisked away in an Egyptian Army helicopter which headed for the main military hospital in Maadi,' a Cairo suburb. Reporters were kept away from the area at Cairo Airport where the Egyptian leader welcomed the former Iranian monarch. The former Shah left his previous place of exile in Panama yesterday, and the! DCB airliner carrying him, touched down for refuelling in the Portuguese Azores. Hospital officials said the former monarch, who has been living in Panama since lasi December, would be kept in a specialist wing of the hospital. A team of 15 doctors had been assigned to treat him. The officials did not say whether he would undergo surgery.

Military policemen carrying automatic weapons patroiled the hospital and guarded the rooftops surrounding the unit, which overlooks the River Nile. The hospital itself is set in a fashionable residential quarter where many diplomats and wealthy Egyptians live. The former Shah left his exile haven in Panama a day before Iran planned to start formal extradition proceedings against him. In Washington, United States officials insisted there was no connection between his departure from Panama and the fate of the United

States embassy hostages; held in Teheran since November 4. ’ i Teheran, a spokesman for the militant students holding the American hostages said the Shah’s departure had not changed their demand that the former leader .be returned to Iran to face trial for what the Iranian Government says are crimes committed during his itrgn. The Shah, who underwent treatment for cancer in New York last November, was to have been treated in Panama.

However, a dispute arose in the hospital over who would carry out an operation to remove his spleen, according to sources in Panama. Panamanian doctors fused to allow United States surgeons to perform the necessary operation.

Yesterday it was announced that the Shah was flying to Egypt, '-kin., up a long-standing invitation from President Anwar Sadat. The Government newspaper, “Al Gomhomia,” in the first comment on the Shah’s visit, said he was welcome in recognition of his support for Egypt, during and after tl.e 1973 war against Israel i The front-page commentary said: “the decision was also in line with Egypt’s traditional hospitality.

“Egypt has thus proved that it was the only country in the world that stood by

;the Shah in times of crisis and in respect of its traditions. Other countries did not have the courage to do the same,” it said. It did not name the countries concerned, but said these very same countries had raced to welcome him .when he was in power. The Shah provided Egypt with about $lOOO million in loans and credit after the war, and in 1974 sent Egypt huge quantities of oil to offset an oil shortage. In Panama yesterday, informed sources said the Iranian Government was going to hand over a sheaf of documents listing what it claimed were the Shah’s crimes as the first stage in getting him extradited.

However. senior Panamanian officials said it was unlikely that the former Shah would be handed over because Panamanian law forbade Extradition to countries where the person was likely to face the death sentence.

Since leaving Teheran on an “indefinite holiday" at the beginning of last year, the former Shah has been in Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico, the United States and. until yesterday, Panama. He was in the United States for cancer treatment when student militants stormed the embassy, holding hostages and demanding the Shah’s return to face the courts.