Iraq Answers Challenge Of Nasser

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28528, 6 March 1958, Page 15

Iraq Answers Challenge Of Nasser

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

LONDON, March 5. The decision of Nuri Pasha, now aged 70, to become Premier of Iraq, for his seventh term since 1930 is seen by British commentators as a reaction to the declared hostility of Colonel Nasser’s Arab Republic. The Beirut correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph,” says the move is a reply to the challenge of the Arab Republic’s campaign of vilification waged from Damascus against the Arab Federation of Iraq and Jordan and its principal spokesman in Bagdad and Amman.

“It portends that the federation will be more hostile to Nasser and the Syrian-Egyptian Union. An intensification of the radio war can be expected. The “Daily Telegraph” says in a leading article:—“As long as there was a chance the two unions would live and let live, the better part of statesmanship for Nuri Pasha was to remain in the The possibilities of a peaceable Arab coexistence could have been more hopefully explored by someone less publicly identified with Iraq’s Western alliance, and not personally antipathetic to Colonel Nasser. “Now that Nasser has destroyed any such prospect by his blistering denunciation of the federation there is no reason for Nuri Pasha to hesitate in taking its helm.” Inter-Arab rivalries now enter a new phase of competition of “uncommitted” the Beirut correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” reports. “The resignation of the Iraq cabinet (replaced by Nuri Pashas’s) is inevitably being widely interpreted as a victory for Nasser in the first round of his battle.

“It would perhaps be more accurate to say that Iraq is calling up its front-line troops but either way the effect will be damaging for the Iraq-Jordan Federation since the impression remains that the outgoing Iraqi Government was shaken by Nasser’s attacks and had to be replaced by one of a sterner mettle in Iraq. “In Jordan no leader commands anything like Nasser’s authority or has a tenth of his personal appeal. Most important of all Nasser stands in the eyes of his subjects, and of many Iraqis and

Jordanians, too. for the overturning of an outdated social system on which the Governments of Iraq and Jordan depend for their survival.”