Out of the Heat

Like Perry Como and Red Skelton, Iraq's Strongman Premier Nuri asSaid believes in the custom of summer replacements. Last week, as Baghdad's asphalt sidewalks turned sticky-soft in the sweltering desert heat, Nuri turned over Iraq's government to Senator Ali Jawdat, then went back to poring over a map on which was circled in ink the fashionable south German spa, Buehlerhohe, near Baden-Baden. First, Nuri confided, he was going to London for a medical checkup, then off to the Black Forest. Later he was returning to London briefly to look after two grandsons who are entering Cambridge in the fall.

Two years older than Nuri, and an affable, intelligent and wealthy politico, Ali Jawdat, 70, is Nuri's longtime comrade in arms. Like Nuri, he was trained by the Turks in the Ottoman military college at Istanbul, fought in the Camel Corps against the Turks in the Arab revolt in World War I. He has been Premier twice before (in 1934 and 1949). One of his sons is a close friend of young King Feisal, and helps him care for his sports cars; the other is Iraqi agent for Westinghouse air conditioners.

Even some Nuri supporters have lately complained that the time had come to relax the strict controls that Nuri imposed at the beginning of the Suez crisis. Shrewdly, Nuri had combined his vacation plans with an old maneuver--stepping down to produce an illusion of "change" when politicians began to grumble.

Comfortably, Nuri told TIME: "This is all the same team. There will be no changes in our policies. I need a rest, but I also stepped down because I want to show I am no dictator." He scoffed at the idea (aired last week in the New York Times) that he was resigning so that some Iraqi premier less hostile to Nasser might negotiate a rapprochement with Egypt and Syria. Said Nuri: "Egypt has chosen to go with the Russians, we with the West. There can be no real improvement in our relations until one or the other changes policies, and we are not going to change ours."

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