In Cairo, President Gamal Abdel Nasser acted like an ex-champion seeking a successful comeback. He lost much of his claim for the title of Arab leadership in 1961, when an army coup wrenched Syria from its short-lived merger with Egypt in the United Arab Republic. That left Nasser without a single Arab ally, and surrounded by such virulent enemies as Iraq's Dictator Kassem and the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Then came last month's Iraqi revolution and the overthrow of Kassem. No one could blame Egypt's leader for harking back to old dreams of Arab grandeur, for this new man in Baghdad—President Abdul Salam Aref—was a former Nasser protege dedicated to Pan-Arab unity.
Tribute to Mother. With this in mind, Nasser mounted a platform in Cairo's vast Republic Square last week to celebrate the fifth anniversary of his defunct United Arab Republic. Strings of Ramadan lights outlined the mosques and minarets, and a crowd of 20,000 jammed the square protected from the cold night air by a siwan, a "hall" roofed and walled by brightly colored canvas. "Union! Union! Union! Nasser! Nasser! Nasser!" roared the mob. What it got was a little less than Nasser had hoped for. The leaders of the Iraqi delegation to the celebration, Deputy Premier Ali Saleh Saadi and Foreign Minister Talib Hussein Shabib, were cordial enough, but they were far from specific. Saadi dutifully paid tribute to Egypt as the "mother republic" of the Arab world, but instead of calling for union, he urged only a "frank rapprochement" between Cairo and Baghdad.
Was this enough? Sure, cried Nasser in his own speech. Today, he declared, "there is a unity of objectives between the revolution in Baghdad and the revolution in Cairo," and "we do not need treaties or constitutional forms to prove this unity."
Jail for the Dog. In Baghdad, new President Aref and his colleagues were too busy learning how to run a country to pay much attention. The slain Kassem, now dubbed "the mad tyrant," had quarreled with all his neighbors. Aref was restoring trade relations with Egypt, imports from Lebanon and exports to little Kuwait, the oil-rich principality Kassem once tried to take over. Tidying up another national problem, Aref sent a helicopter north to pick up two delegates of the Kurdish rebels in the hope that he might negotiate an end to the bloody civil war that has tied up half the 75,000-man Iraqi army; he even made friendly overtures to the U.S.-British controlled Iraq Petroleum Co., which Kassem had alienated.