THE MIDDLE EAST: The Dry & the Wet

Telephones jingled in five Baghdad embassies. A procession of limousines, national flags aflutter from their fenders, drove up outside Iraq's yellow brick Foreign Ministry. One by one, the ambassadors of Britain, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan marched inside to receive a note from Iraq's Foreign Minister Hashim Jawad. When they had left, the U.S.'s gangling Ambassador John Jernegan was ushered in and got the same word verbally. Later, at a press conference to which Western correspondents were not invited, Premier Abdul Karim Kassem, Iraq's strongman, announced publicly what the ambassadors had been...

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