18
Arab League resulted in a broader Middle Eastern representation, with
participation from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Syria,
Sudan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia (Kahin 1956 ). Above all, the Kingdom
was also a founding member of the NAM and attended the first summit
meeting hosted by President Tito in Belgrade in September 1961.
More substantially, Riyadh was opposed to the US-led military alliances
in the Middle East aimed at encircling and containing the USSR. The
Egyptian leader strongly argued that the military bloc would pave the way
for the return of colonialism and in his view, the newly established State of
Israel was a far greater threat and challenge to the Middle East than the
Soviet Union (Podeh 1995 ). This partly led to the Czech deal announced
in September 1955 whereby Nasser concluded the largest military transfer
of that time with the eastern bloc countries (Muehlenbeck 2016 , 94).
The Saudi position towards bloc politics was not different from Nehru’s.
The then monarchical Iraq under the Hashemites was a prominent mem-
ber of the bloc and until the Ba’athist coup in July 1958, the organization
was known as the Baghdad Pact. Al-Saud was apprehensive that Iraq
would seek and, with the American backing, even secure the leadership of
the Arab world (Podeh 1995 ). There was an historic baggage. In the early
1920, Ibn- Saud defeated Sharif Hussein of Mecca—the father of King
Faisal II of Iraq and King Abdullah I of Jordan—to establish the modern
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Teitelbaum 2001 ). Hence, when Pakistan
joined the CENTO, the Saudi embassy in that country “took the unusual
step of issuing a press handout containing the text of the Radio Mecca
broadcast which exhorted Pakistan to withdraw from the Pact and ‘return
to the right path’” (Agwani 1976 , 72).
The Saudi-Egyptian bonhomie and interest convergence over CENTO
did not last long. Since the mid-1950s, Nasser was moving closer to the
USSR with whom the Kingdom had severe differences, if not problems. In
1926, the Marxist USSR became the first country to recognize the
Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd, the precursor to the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia, but the Saudi-Soviet relations were anything but cordial, primarily
because of the attitude of the “Godless Communists” towards the Muslims
of USSR (Yodfat 1983 ; Rubinstein 1979 ). Only a handful and select
Muslims were allowed to go to Saudi Arabia for the annual haj pilgrimage,
and it was only after President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost in
the late 1980s, one could witness a large number of Soviet hajis (Kane
2015 ). Thus, Nasser’s growing proximity with Moscow unnerved the
P. R. KUMARASWAMY AND MD. M. QUAMAR