Slowly but Surely

Forty years ago a young Arab officer rode triumphantly up the old Hejaz railway beside Prince Feisal and Lawrence of Arabia toward the ancient desert capital of Amman. Last week, still pursuing his old dream of an Arab nation filling the Fertile Crescent from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, General Nuri asSaid, 70, returned to Amman to put into being a new union, the Arab Federation, joining the kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan.

"We will implement our union slowly but surely in order to avoid mistakes," rasped the old soldier in a radio broadcast to the Federation's 8,000,000 citizens. Though he did not say so, the mistake Nuri Pasha meant most to avoid was precipitating a showdown any sooner than necessary in the inevitable struggle for Middle East supremacy between the new Federation and Nasser's dynamic United Arab Republic, which has four times as many citizens but no oil wealth.

Besides the resources that Iraq's oil and river-bottom lands will bring to the new Federation, it will have advantages of common frontiers and racial ties that Nasser's union conspicuously lacks. But Iraq is not keen to share its wealth with barren Jordan, and the Federation has been slow getting started. Iraq's King Feisal, 23, and his cousin Hussein. 22, of Jordan will both keep their crowns and the federal Parliament and Cabinet, controlling foreign and defense policies, will meet alternately in Baghdad and Amman. Still to be worked out: whether Iraq, which has plenty of farm land to reclaim, will be able to absorb many of the 500,000 Palestinian refugees who have made Jordanian politics so volatile. Premier Nuri appears as likely to dominate the new Federation Cabinet as the 14 Cabinets he has bossed in more than 25 years as Iraq's strongman.

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