Word: afro-asian
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...discordantly through some 60 unfamiliar national anthems. Bureaucrats frantically cabled Paris to find out what had happened to 200 new Citroën limousines ordered for the great occasion. And Des Pins, a once tranquil seaside resort where the Algerian government insisted to the bitter end that the second Afro-Asian Conference would take place this week on schedule, looked like a manic blend of Hellzapoppin and The Last Days of Pompeii...
Khoya Quandary. For all the herculean effort, the Afro-Asian* "summit" was doomed in advance to be a colossal anticlimax. As one Arab diplomat observed: "You can't have a coup and a conference." Yet that was exactly what Colonel Houari Boumedienne hoped to achieve. Since every invitation to the conference had been personally issued by President Ahmed ben Bella, the man whom Boumedienne had deposed a week earlier, many heads of state doubted the propriety of attending it as guests of the new regime; others were frankly worried about their safety. Even before the coup, the nine former...
...week's end, after endless disputation and hand wringing, an Afro-Asian committee voted to postpone the conference until Nov. 5. Infuriated, the Peking delegation charged that the summit had been "sabotaged" by "imperialists." The new site? Still Algeria...
...Definition: a state of mind. Cyprus, which professes nonalignment, is called Afro-Asian, while Malta, another former British colony in the Mediterranean, is not. Australia is disqualified because it is loyal to the West; South Africa belongs geographically but not politically. Red China is not nonaligned, but is accepted as "anti-colonialist." In short, any nation can be Afro-Asian if most other Afro-Asian nations want it in the club...
...their Afro-Asian visitors were confused about Algeria's new government, the Algerians were left even deeper in the dark. The government-controlled press, radio and TV pointedly avoided any explanation of its aims. The regime's newly appointed spokesman, a suave former tourism minister named Si Slimane, even refused to identify the members of the ruling Revolutionary Council or say how many there were. Asked last week whether Houari Boumedienne was in fact the new Chief of State, Slimane snapped back: "That is a question which should not be asked...