Word: kassem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...Kassem's Collaborators. As Iraq's militant Communists slipped from Kassem's favor three solid citizens took their places as the Premier's closest collaborators...
...future in Iraq is still anybody's guess, but with these three men beside him, harried, bone-weary Kassem is in better position to lead his country farther to the left-but not toward Moscow...