"These Savage Acts"

In 112DEG heat, representatives of Baghdad's press and radio settled uneasily in their chairs for a hastily called press conference by Premier Karim Kassem. He wanted to ask questions, not answer them. For four hours an unsmiling Kassem blasted his audience, charged Baghdad's predominantly Communist press with fomenting the recent bloody, three-day uprising in Kirkuk that took 121 lives. Though he never used the term "Communist," Kassem referred repeatedly to "anarchists," and his audience knew whom he had in mind.

Kneading a white handkerchief over his knuckled fist, Kassem explained that he had "gathered you here to reprove you and to place blame on you and your editors ... for indulging in recrimination, confusing the people, and creating the present condition in the country."

Aziz al Haj, editorial writer for Baghdad's pro-Communist Ittihad al Shaab, protested that his paper had sought only to serve the country by exposing plots against it. Kassem brusquely cut him off. "Be quiet!" he snapped. "Every paper claims to be the only sincere one. Sons of the people are all one force. I follow the whole, not a certain party. Any party is a minority, and let there be no mistake: the people can crush the anarchists."

Then he passed around pictures of atrocities committed in Kirkuk. He was seething: "Not even the Zionists in their time committed such acts." He showed prints of mutilated, dismembered bodies. "These are sons of the people," he went on. "This is the work of the group that calls itself a national force."

He held up a gory picture of a Turcoman woman, demanded: "What right did they have to kill this woman? Is that what the granting of rights to women means?" Almost absently, Kassem continued: "Look at these savage acts. Do they not discredit freedom and democracy? What have you done? These pictures cause pain. Look at the poor people being dragged in the streets." Composing himself, Kassem said: "Rest assured that this will not happen again. There is force ready to destroy anyone attempting it."

The Premier produced maps that he said had been seized during a recent raid on the Communist-dominated Student Union. The maps divided Baghdad into sectors "for the purpose of dragging through the streets the sons of the people. The students marked some of the houses 'suspect' and others 'for dragging.' " Kassem's wrath next turned to the Red-dominated Iraqi trade unions, which he accused of engaging too heavily in politics. Almost as a footnote, he referred to another riotous occasion--the Mosul uprising last March in which a notorious Communist lawyer "buried 17 persons alive."

After this long and emotional indictment, Kassem wound up the press conference by saying that military press censorship would be lifted for one day so that Baghdad papers could report the press conference as they wished. He would be interested to see what would appear. With that, Kassem, without a smile, departed. As usual, crowds on Rashid Street dogtrotted beside his familiar Chevrolet station wagon, cheering, applauding and chanting praiseful slogans. But this time they were rewarded by neither a grin nor a wave.

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