Strength for the Northern Tier

Turkey's two mightiest political figures last week left their own shores to line up friends abroad. President Celal Bayar turned up in Karachi to cement a military alliance with Pakistan. Premier Adnan Menderes descended by air on Baghdad to sign a Turkish-Iraqi treaty of mutual defense against Communism.

The Iraqi treaty quickly became fact. Iraq's 67-year-old Premier Nuri es-Said, who was an officer in T. E. Lawrence's World War I desert army against the Turks, pushed the treaty through Iraq's parliament. Turkey's National Assembly ratified it unanimously. Since Turkey is a member of NATO, Iraq became the first of the Arab League states to join the pro-Western chain of alliances.

Moscow denounced the pact as "a stab in the back" for the Arab League countries. The U.S., which had carefully taken no hand in the negotiations, was pleased. The pact strengthens the Middle East's "northern tier" (the defense line from Turkey to Pakistan). Pakistan, hitherto isolated on the northern tier's right wing, exulted. "It's good to be a bridge instead of feeling like a chasm," said a Pakistan official. The Pakistani were talking of including Iran too, which like Turkey and Pakistan is Moslem but not Arab.

The Arabs were miffed--particularly Egypt, which has long fancied itself the leader of the Arab world and wants to keep the Arab world uncommitted for now in the cold war. Egypt's pique at Iraq's "betrayal" was shared most loudly by oil-rich Saudi Arabia, whose ruling Al Saud family hates Iraq's Hashemite royal house. Some other members of the Arab League--notably Jordan and Lebanon--are eying the Turkish-Iraqi pact furtively, and under the right circumstances might be persuaded to join. Iraq's bold step has all but finished the Arab League.

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