Three Kings in Accord

Into Jordan's Amman International Airport last week flew an unaccustomed visitor: King Feisal of Saudi Arabia, whose father's desert warriors drove Jordan's Hashemite dynasty out of Arabia 40 years ago. Last week the family feud was forgotten as the Jordanian army boomed out a 21-gun salute, and Feisal and Jordan's King Hussein exchanged embraces and bussed one another warmly on each cheek.

Ahead were seven days of banquets, military inspections and private talks. And if the rumors being spread by the Arab socialist press could be believed, what they would be talking about was a conservative anti-Nasser "Islamic alliance" among Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iran. This was vast exaggeration, but there was no blinking the fact that the Three Kings of Orient had been drawing closer together, settling their differences and emerging as a force that could prove to be an important balance against the socialist countries of the Middle East.

Last September, Hussein flew to Teheran for secret talks with Iran's Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi. In December, Feisal paid his own visit to the Shah, where the two settled an old dispute over offshore oil rights in the Persian Gulf. The oil-rich gulf, in fact, is doubtless one key element in all the royal rambling, for with Britain considering withdrawal from its bases at Bahrein and Aden, an informal understanding today could become a formal pact tomorrow if leftists try to push the Nasserite cause in the region.

Ahead were more talks between the monarchs. Iran's Shah will soon repay the visits by Hussein and Feisal with trips to their capitals.

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