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In any confrontation, the regime would likely prevail. In the four years since it seized absolute power, the Baath Party has ruthlessly consolidated its rule. One method was the execution of more than 120 potential opponents, some of whom were strung up in Baghdad's Tahrir Square in grisly public hangings. Other enemies of the regime languish in a Baghdad prison that Iraqis ironically refer to as the "Palace of the End." President Ahmed Hassan Bakr, 57, the cautious army general who was installed to arbitrate between feuding Baath factions, has become a figurehead as Vice President Takriti concentrated power in his own hands. Says a Western diplomat in Baghdad: "As things stand now, Bakr has no role to play; Saddam Hussein is it."
The Baath Party's rule has reduced the legendary thousand-and-one nights capital of Haroun-al-Rashid to "a joyless city where laughter is alien and diplomats politely suspend dinner conversations when a waiter hovers within earshot," reported TIME Correspondent Gavin Scott after a visit last week. The city (pop. 2,100,000) is a dusty, sunbaked mélange of blue-domed mosques, dun-colored buildings and massive office complexes housing a growing government bureaucracy. Traffic jams are frequent as British-built double-decker buses, government Chevrolets and even donkeys all maneuver for the five bridges that span the Tigris. To break the jams, police assess fines as high as $320 merely for illegal parking on Saaddoun Street, the city's main thoroughfare.
Once one of the Middle East's most xenophobic and insulated nations, Iraq is striving to end its role as odd man out and looking for diplomatic friends. Last March, Iraq proposed yet another Arab federation, with Syria and Egypt, but the notion was quickly rejected in Cairo. Libya was left out of Baghdad's plans at the time because its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, had objected to Iraq's growing friendship with the Soviet Union. But since then, Gaddafi has spoken up in favor of the I.P.C. nationalization, and "he is now our friend," said a foreign ministry spokesman last week. Iraqis would like to see a united Arab war of attrition against Israel, but have prudently refrained from doing anything about it themselves. A 12,000-man Iraq expeditionary force facing Israel from Jordan was suddenly recalled two years ago because, as the foreign ministry insisted, "the U.S. Sixth Reel was sailing around in hot Mediterranean waters. We have our own country to protect." Baghdad is 600 miles from the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, relations are expanding outside the Arab world. Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin visited Baghdad two months ago to sign a friendship pact. After his visit to Paris last week, Takriti announced his ambition "to see Franco-Iraqi relations raised to the level of relations with the Soviet Union." Diplomatic relations between Baghdad and Washington were severed after the Six-Day War, and 13 months ago, Iraq confiscated the U.S. embassy to house its foreign ministry. But in September, two U.S. foreign service officers will arrive in Baghdad to take over the American-interests section of the Belgian embassy, a task that is currently being handled by one Belgian.