Kassem's Corner

"Death to the imperialist!" shouted Iraq's General Abdul Karim Kassem. "Return Kuwait to its homeland!"

Sprinting from speech to speech on the third anniversary of his revolutionary regime, volatile Kassem repeated last week that he would not use force to "liberate" Kuwait--and in the next breath threatened force against Britain. "We shall launch a bitter war against the British if they do not heed right and abandon oppression!" he told the crowds after reviewing a 2 1/2-hour parade of troops and weapons in Baghdad's Liberation Square.

For all his brave talk, Kassem was in a tight corner. Britain announced that it was withdrawing 2,000 of the 5,000 troops it had rushed to defend Kuwait against Kassem, and Kuwait emphasized its eagerness to speed the evacuation. But in a barbed memorandum issued after a hurried visit to Nasser, the Kuwaitis declared that they would not ask the British to leave until either 1) Kassem drops all claims on their land, or 2) other Arab countries provide a police force of their own to replace the British, and themselves guarantee Kuwait's independence. The plan for an all-Arab force in Kuwait, on which Britain and the U.A.R. found themselves in rare agreement, would put Kassem in the ticklish position of opposing his fellow Arab Leaguers.

At the start of his mammoth, six-day anniversary celebration, Kassem was plainly in no mood to back down. He flourished a note in which, he claimed, his oil-rich neighbor had offered him $112 million a year if he would drop his claims and guarantee Kuwait's independence. Rejecting the offer, Kassem snorted: "The issue is not a matter of money, oil or bribes, but of a holy land." He added: "Anyway, Iraq is rich."

But he had not solved the dilemma he had talked himself into. As he put it with inadvertent candor: "I don't want to be the joke of the world, and I don't want to be thought of as another Hitler swallowing up people."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.