Foreign Aid Is Withdrawn from Egypt's Aswan High Dam Project.

The series of mixed political priorities that led to the collapse of the U.S. and British plan to sponsor construction of the Aswan High Dam began at least as early as 1953. In the first years after the 1952 coup that ousted King Farouk I, attempts had been made to draw Egypt away from participating in the struggle against Israel and to move Cairo into a strategic alliance with the Western camp. Following failure of the British-initiated Middle East Defense Organization scheme (1950-1951), a different policy was introduced to elicit cooperation from Cairo’s new leader, Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser.