Lt. General al-Shazliy welcoming  Soviet President Podgorny during his visit to Egypt, May, 1971

It is a question of capacity plus will. Only a superpower could have had the development and manufacturing capacity. Of the superpowers, only the Soviet Union had the will. (Western Europe might have had the weapons, but probably not the production runs and certainly not the concerted will.) Nor would anyone else have granted us the Soviet credit terms. In my view, that remains the case. The Soviet Union was, and in my view is, the best available ally for an Egypt bent upon liberating its lost territory.

Their reasons were obvious enough. As a superpower, the Soviet Union had its own concerns. For example, the Soviets always made it clear that while supporting Egypt and the Arab cause they in no way countenanced the destruction of Israel. Another superpower concern, unspoken but unmistakable, was not to escalate the arms race in the Middle East to the point of confrontation with the United States. Through control of the arms supply, in other words, the Soviet Union sought to influence, though they could not direct, the course of events in the Middle East. Their final concern, one scarcely peculiar to superpowers though easier for them to attain, was to seek from their alliance with us particular points of advantage in the struggle with their rival superpower.

Egypt's concerns were equally obvious: to get the weapons we needed as fast and as cheaply as possible, and free from strings-with the freedom, that is, to use them as we saw fit. We had no interest in seeing either superpower establish hegemony over the Arab world. But, as a mark of our alliance and because the Arab world's wider interest lay in a balance between the super-powers, we were prepared to offer the Soviet Union facilities in Egypt which assisted them in their struggle with the United States, so long as those facilities in no way impinged upon our own freedom of action.

Through my time as Chief of Staff, the urgency of our need for arms-our battle to push the Soviets into supplying us on a bigger scale than ever before-was the dominant theme of our relationship. But it was the Soviet's wider ambitions against the United States which confronted us first.

May 19, 1971, 20 00 hours: A Soviet delegation of three-Generals : Yefimov (Air Force), Admiral Vassily (Navy), and General Vasily Okunev (Chief Soviet Adviser in Egypt) met an Egyptian team of General Sadiq, myself and Brigadier Amiyr al-Nasir. The Soviet Navy already had facilities at Alexandria and at Port Said. The delegation had come to ask for more.

At Alexandria they wanted a building or complex of buildings to house the 200 Soviet military families now scattered around the town. They suggested the San Stefano Hotel. Their plans for Marsa Matruwh were more ambitious. They wanted to deepen the port by 24 feet, and to build or rent quarters nearby to house 160 families and 2,000 single personnel. They wanted to expand Marsa Matruwh airport to take a Soviet fighter brigade and an air defense brigade. And they wanted to build two radar stations: one 50 miles to the west, the other 50 miles to the east

Sadiq at once told them their requests were political rather than military and he could give no decision. He would consult the President and reply within a week. After the Russians had left, Sadiq asked me to head a committee to study the request.

May 25-28: Soviet President Podgorny arrived in Cairo.

May 27: The two delegations met again. This time the Soviet team was headed by General Pavlovsky, who was accompanying Podgorny.Pavlovsky told us, to our astonishment, that it ha been Sadat himself, with the former War Minister Fawziy who had suggested during Sadat 's last visit to Moscow in March that the Soviet fleet use Marsa Matruwh. Their proposals, Pavlovsky said, flowed from that. To defend their ships they needed an air force brigade. That needed a base. To defend the base, they needed an air defense brigade. To protect the whole, they needed radar. So the Soviets stuck to their request. We presented our compromise.

We met again the next day, May 28, but by the time Pavlovsky had to depart with Podgorny we still had not reached an agreement. I found it faintly ironic that while we were disagreeing, Sadat and Podgorny were signing a new treaty of friendship and cooperation. But primarily I was alarmed that the President should apparently have offered so much in Moscow without telling anyone, and then left us to beat the retreat.

The President turned to his plans: "Let none of you be in doubt about our strategy. I can summarize it points. The first is to keep and strengthen our relations with the Soviet Union until we have built a modern and powerful country both economically and militarily. Zionism is an aggressive wave, just like the Crusades. Like them it will flow for decades. Our friendship with the Soviet Union gives us the strength and support to repulse that wave. The second point of our strategy Is Arab unity. We shall move steadily and consistently in the directions dictated by those two goals."

Sadat described his meetings with President Podgorny: "During our talks with the Soviet delegation, they never referred to our internal affairs. When I was alone with President Podgorny, he asked me simply why I had chosen that particular time, May 2, to dismiss `Aliy Sabriy. I told him I made the decision to dismiss him a few days before the arrival of Rogers on May 4. Having done so, I did not want to postpone acting upon it until after Rogers' visit, in case the dismissal appeared the price of some agreement with the Americans. So I decided to get rid of him at once. You know what Podgorny said? "Brezhnev, Kosygin and I came up with precisely that explanation."

But could we get the equipment, he was asked, the questioner clearly referring to the fact that the Soviets always seemed readier to supply defensive than offensive weapons. "When we plan the offensive," the President said, "I want us to plan within our capabilities, nothing more. Cross the canal and hold even ten centimeters of Sinai, I'm exaggerating, of course, and that will help me greatly and alter completely the political situation both internationally and within Arab ranks.."

(To be continued)

(1) Egypt never had the final say in the quality and the quantity of weapons received from the Soviet Union. The list of weapons agreed upon between both countries was always subject to negotiation. Four main factors were taken into consideration: (1) Soviet readiness to supply the weapons; (2) Egypt's financial capability to pay for the weapons; (3) Soviet readiness to supply Egypt with loans to finance the deal; (4) Egypt's capability to absorb these weapons. The October 1971 deal, although our biggest to that date, was just a compromise. It could never be considered adequate to meet the requirements of Operation 41; it fell too short for that. Nevertheless, it was a good step forward.