Salah Salem by the Iraqi government. He condemned Iraq's membership of the Baghdad Pact, saying: "This is a serious development which may threaten the Arab League and expose Arab nationalism to great dangers..." On January 31, 1955, he along with foreign and prime ministers from Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri as-Said. The meeting ended with a realisation that the demands of Said's Iraq and Nasser' Egypt were irreconcilable. In the Suez Crisis of 1956, known in Egypt as the "Tripartite Aggression", Salem is said to have demanded that Nasser hand himself over to the British forces invading
Suez Crisis Peacekeepers to police the Egyptian–Israeli border, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, Canadian Minister of External Affairs Lester Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize, and the USSR may have been emboldened to invade Hungary. The Suez Canal was opened in 1869, after ten years of work financed by the French and Egyptian governments. The canal was operated by the Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal, an Egyptian-chartered company; the area surrounding the canal remained sovereign Egyptian territory and the only land-bridge between Africa and Asia. The canal instantly became strategically important, as it provided the shortest ocean link between