Down with Nasser?

Ever since the ruling Baath Party in Syria and Iraq fell out with Gamal Abdel Nasser, damping hopes of a new Arab federation, the Baathists have loudly maintained that there was still room for cooperation with Egypt's strongman. Last week their thin fac,ade split crashingly apart. On the very day originally set for a plebiscite in the three countries to form a tripartite nation, the Baathist high command denounced Nasser by name and called on Egyptians to rise up against him.

Broadcast over the Baghdad and Damascus radios, the statement claimed that the agreement signed in Cairo last April promised collective leadership but that Nasser, to preserve his "dictatorial existence," had tried to grab control of the new union--even inciting the "criminal" July 18 abortive coup in Syria, which was crushed at a cost of scores of dead. Calling themselves the true leaders of Arab federation, the Baathists declared that Egypt was still welcome to join, urged "popular forces in the Egyptian region" to indulge in an "upsurge and smashing of barriers in order to join with the other revolutionary Arab forces."

Cairo did not reply for 24 hours, then roared back that Baath had ruined "the dearest aspiration of the Arabs, stabbing the union and tearing the charter into pieces." The Egyptians reserved their choicest words for the Baath lead ers in Damascus, who, Nasser's Arab Socialist Union said, had "sunk Syria in a sea of blood." Cairo even taunted the Syrians with a ditty. A singer asks, "Where are the free?" and a chorus answers, "They entered Mezza" (a Damascus prison). The singer then asks, "Where are the revolutionaries?" and the chorus comes back, "In Mezza."

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