SADAT EXPECTS SHAH SURGERY SOON

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000606050010-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: March 26, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606050010-5
OPT PAu~ --
Cairo (Combined Dispatches}-_j
President Anwar Sadat visited the;
deposed Shah of Iran, Mohammad)
Reza Pahlavi, in his hospital suite)
yesterday and said afterward that!
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini can
"shout to the end of the world" but
Pahlavi will live permanently in
Egypt. _
Sadat said that Pahlavi, who arrived in
Egypt from Panama Monday looking
drawn and frail, was running a high fever
and was being prepared for surgery,
which will be done with the shah's Ameri-
can doctors participating.
Declaring that Islam preaches compas-
sion and not Khomeini's brand of "ven-
geance and hatred," Sadat said that the
shah will live permanently in exile in
Egypt even if "I shall force it on him.
Sadat dismissed Iran's angry, threaten-
ing reaction to his offer of asylum for the
ailing shah, saying, "They may shout
until the end of the world. I shall never
heed this."
As Sadat spoke, Iranian mobs at the
occupied United States Embassy in I
Tehran chanted-threats against him, and
Iranian Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotb-
zadeh denounced him as "a puppet of
Israel and the United States."
Hardline Arab nations attacked Sadat
for welcoming the shah. The pro-Syrian
newspaper Al Sharq of Beirut, Lebanon,
in a typical comment, said the shah's
presence is a "grave security risk for
Sadat, who will soon find thathis isolation
from his own people has deepened."
The Cairo newspaper Al Akhbar re-
ported yesterday that the shah left Pana-
ma hurriedly because he had received
"secret in information him in Panama. The
plotting to to poison
newspaper said the poisoning would have
been aimed at obtaining the release of the
Tehran embassy hostages by making the
Iranians' demands for the shah's extradi-
tion moot.
THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Z6 March 1980
A CIA denial
A CIA s kesman in Washington,
K t P ersie a report, ca h
i
bsolutel absu. .
Sadat was s eptica when asked about
the report. "I don't read such stories. I
deal with facts," he told reporters.
The Al Shaab newspaper of Egypt's
small Socialist Labor Party, an anti-Sadat
group, said the shah would be a "burden"
for Egypt. "We do not welcome the shah
here, to spare the Egyptian people the
burden of his protection and security," it
said.
The Egyptian leader spoke with repor-
ters following a 15-minute visit with the
shah in his 15-room suite at the heavily
fortified Maadi armed forces hospital
outside Cairo. The shah is suffering from
an enlarged spleen, a condition resulting
from a suspected spread of cancer.
Sadat said the shah "for sure" will
undergo surgery by Egyptian doctors
"and whomever he wants from his own;
(foreign) doctors." Foreign doctors due
Asked if the surgery will be performed
soon, Sadat replied, "Yes, but the whole j
thing is in the hands of the doctors. My
doctors contacted the American and
French doctors who treated him previous-
ly. Some of them will be arriving here,
but the date of their arrival has not been
fixed yet."
He did not identify the doctors. The
newspaper Al Akhbar said that Dr.
Michael DeBakey, the Houston, Tex.,
heart specialist, would arrive tomorrow.
DeBakey's office in Houston would not
comment.
A devout Moslem, Sadat reiterated
that his invitation to the shah was rooted
in Islam and in the debt of gratitude he
said Egypt owed the shah for his aid
during the 1973 Middle East war with
Israel.
"True tradition of Islam"
"We are Moslems," Sadat said In a
speech before a union of artists. "This is
the true tradition of Islam. This is not the
Islam that Khomeini is preaching there-
vengeance, hatred and so on. But the
shah will be living with his family among
us here, among friends and among
brothers'
-
Sadat said the shah came to Egypt's
aid with 600,000 tons of oil during they
1973 October war after Libya reneged on)
,a promise to provide fuel. "I only had thei
Shah of Iran to turn to," Sadat said.
"This is but one of the tons of things
the shah has done for Egypt," Sadat said.
His audience applauded him enthusiasti?
cally
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000606050010-5