Word: bakr
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Saddam tolerates no opposition. Iraqi jails are said to be filled with political prisoners. No sooner had Saddam assumed the presidency from ailing Ahmed Hassan al Bakr last year than he ordered scores of top government officials arrested on charges of plotting to overthrow his regime. He presided over the execution of 21 officials, including a popular Deputy Premier who had been a close friend. Two battered typewriters on which he and his revolutionary comrades once composed antigovernment propaganda are now on display in a Baghdad museum. At the same time, however, Iraqi citizens must have a license...
...general who had seized power the year before, Saddam fled to Syria and Egypt. In Cairo he studied law and joined the Baath Party, a revolutionary group of Arab nationalists. He returned to Iraq in 1963, and by the time the Baathists staged their 1968 coup under General Bakr, Saddam had become second in command. He set up his own secret police organization, suppressed all challengers, and soon became the real power in the country...
...West German counterpart, Hans-Dietrich Genscher. Their visits are solid evidence of the growing Western interest in Iraq and of Baghdad's desire to open new economic and diplomatic relations with the West. They also suggest that Saddam Hussein, 42, who replaced ailing Ahmed Hassan al Bakr, 65, as President last July, is determined to forge a more active, and possibly less radical, foreign policy for his country. TIME Correspondent Bruce van Voorst reports from Baghdad...
...merger with Syria is consummated, Iraq's movement toward moderation is likely to accelerate. Until now, Iraq has been one of the most adamant opponents of negotiations between the Arabs and the Israelis. But when Bakr and Syrian President Hafez Assad met in Baghdad last October, they agreed to base their foreign policy toward Israel on two demands: a return of all Arab lands occupied by the Israelis since the 1967 war, and the creation of a Palestinian state. Though neither Bakr nor Assad believes that the Israelis are prepared to make such concessions, it is significant that...
Despite its harshness in suppressing dissent, the Bakr government appears to be popular with most Iraqis. Education and medical care are free to all, and most of the population has shared in the present prosperity. Of all the recent social changes, none is more remarkable than the liberation of Iraqi women. Today they constitute one-third of the country's professional class and 26% of its industrial work force. Unlike their sisters in many other Arab states, they can own land, inherit property and, if divorced, receive alimony...