PAKISTAN: Weaker Ally

For seven days eager-eyed politicians trooped into the teak-lined office of Pakistan's President Iskander Mirza to bid for the job of Prime Minister, from which he had just evicted Hussein Suhrawardy. None quite measured up to the President's notions. Then, looking no farther than his partner across the bridge table, Strongman Mirza found just the weak-man he wanted: Ismail Ibrahim Chundrigar, 60, a colorless, back-room politician with almost no popular support.

Chundrigar, a devout Moslem lawyer who keeps his wife in purdah, is the leader of the once powerful Moslem League, which had been reduced to near impotence when Mirza...

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