The Man Begin Won't See

The man whom Menachem Begin refused to meet last week, Egypt's Premier Moustafa Khalil, guards his privacy so carefully that he is not even listed in Who's Who in Egypt, but he most certainly does have the authority to negotiate for Egypt with Begin or anyone else. He enjoys not only the support of President Sadat but also considerable respect among both conservatives and liberals in Egypt.

Khalil, 58, is a highly skilled technocrat. Born into a prosperous farming family in the Nile Delta, he studied at the University of Illinois, where he earned a doctorate in engineering. A hard-driving and meticulous worker, he became minister of communications in the Nasser regime at the age of 36. As minister of oil and industry, he played a major role in the industrialization of Egypt during the 1950s and '60s, then broke with Nasser's leftist supporters and resigned from the government in 1966 to become a professor at the University of Cairo. An admirer of Western culture (his collection of classical records is reputed to be the finest in Cairo), Khalil also conceived the idea of one of the most effective weapons against the West: the Arab oil boycott of 1973 was his inspiration, which he sold first to the Saudis and then to the other Arab states.

Summoned to the premiership last October, Khalil took on the job of Foreign Minister just last month, effectively ending a bizarre, 14-month period of revolving-door occupancy of Egypt's Foreign Minis try. reporters Fahmy began the shuffle by resigning abruptly in November 1977 after learning of Sadat's decision to visit Jerusalem. His deputy and successor, Mohammed Riad, bowed out only a few hours later. Riad's replacement, Boutros Ghali, cautiously named only acting Foreign Minister, gave way to Mohammed Kamel but took over once more in October of last year after Kamel resigned in protest at the results of the Camp David conference.

Once Premier, Khalil characteristically cracked down on corruption and inefficiency. Eleven former ministers are now under investigation. One of them, Ahmed Sultan, until recently minister of power and electricity, faces charges of accepting $300,000 in bribes from Westinghouse. Khalil's other favorite target is Egypt's sluggish bureaucracy. He has begun decentralizing the system, delegating ministerial authority to rural governors and village headmen.

Among his plans: free and compulsory education for all Egyptians up to high school age, extensive electrification of rural areas, an end to press censorship, restriction on government control of TV and radio. But such plans depend greatly on the Middle East peace negotiations. In some ways, Sadat trusts Khalil to handle these negotiations more than he trusts himself. Sadat is visionary and mercurial; Khalil is cautious and dispassionate. Sadat relies on Khalil to weigh and analyze every Israeli proposal more carefully than Sadat himself might. As one Egyptian official put it, "Khalil would not rise and fall like the snake under the spell of Begin's music." If that music led to an actual treaty, of course, Sadat could hardly resist flying in to sign it --and Khalil would cheerfully stand on the sidelines and watch.

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