One Little Word

Returning from a Baghdad Pact meeting late last month, Pakistan's Prime Minister Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy unburdened himself of a few angry remarks on the state of affairs in the Middle East.

Said he: "Bombs and explosives have been distributed, and there is a conspiracy of destruction and assassination . . . Foreign money is being lavishly spent by countries that want to create chaos, confusion and subversion." Coming from a Moslem leader who had roundly condemned the invasion of Egypt, his remarks might seem to be aimed at Britain and France. In fact, he meant Egypt.

In Baghdad Suhrawardy had seen for himself how Nasser intrigued against Iraq; he was also angry at Nasser's flirtation with Russia, and his cosying up to Pakistan's No. 1 enemy, Nehru's India. Last week, when a New York Times reporter made the conventional assumption, in the form of a question, that all of Asia and Africa stood behind Nasser, forthright Hussein Suhrawardy compressed his reply--and his current opinion of Egypt--into one word: "Phooey."

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