Word: kassim
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...high-ceilinged map room of the Defense Ministry in -Baghdad, Premier Abdul Kareem el-Kassim continued to issue, in his own cautious way, the soothing statements he has been making since the day of his lightning coup. "We are pragmatic people trying to do the best for our country," said he. "We cannot be qualified as Socialists or anything else. Our tendencies should be judged by our actions...
While Premier el-Kassim insists that he does not want to repeat Nasser's mistake of driving away experienced people, his government has already dismissed or jailed most members of the old Development Board, including the director of oil affairs, who probably knows more about the business than anyone else in the country. The present Development Minister is a 29-year-old engineer with a reputation among rebels based largely on a tract he once wrote denouncing the old board, whose plans made Iraq the most promising land of the Middle East...
...Know, Brethren . . ." The Deputy Premier's mission was a sign of the split personality of the new government, which seems to speak with two voices. One voice belongs to Premier el-Kassim, a bachelor and simple soldier who has resolutely avoided the usual pastime of denouncing Israel, or even of damning the U.S. Marine Corps landings in Lebanon ("I do not believe the Americans will engage in any hostilities"). The other voice is that of 39-year-old Aref, onetime military student of El-Kassim's and, significantly, the only other man to know the exact hour...
...dealings with the Western press, Aref has shown none of the cordiality of the Premier. Nor has he taken the moderate line of the inexperienced and earnest El-Kassim, who just wants to be friends with everybody. It was Aref who, on the day of the coup, incited the mobs to attack Nuri and the Crown Prince. It was Aref who flew to Damascus to meet Egypt's Nasser-whose picture is displayed far more often in Baghdad these days than is that of El-Kassim...
Four weeks after the revolution, it begins to look as if El-Kassim may be fated to play Naguib to Aref's Nasser. In a speech three weeks ago, Aref left little doubt about his own beliefs-or what the West might expect, should the extremists decide that soft-spoken El-Kassim had outlived his usefulness...