PESHAWAR: The Central Minister for Health, Education and Social Welfare, Kazi Anwarul Haq, said here yesterday [Oct 4] that the relics of the Indus Valley civilisation and the Gandhara era, and products which have won universal appreciation for representing life and emotions of people who once inhabited this part of the world, provided a strong foundation for our new country and further helped in strengthening the close bonds of friendship with our immediate neighbours.

He said these countries of the orient, particularly in the Middle East, shared with us a common march of human progress and civilisation.

Kazi Anwarul Haq was inaugurating the Archaeology Museum of Peshawar University.

He commended the research efforts of Peshawar University and said that Pakistan`s universities have to strive hard to raise their standard and come forward to help researchers in the country. Staff Correspondent [Meanwhile, as reported by agencies from Cairo,J last May UAR President Gamal Abdel Nasser told reporters inquiring about eventual settlement of the civil war in Yemen and disengagement between UAR and Saudi Arabia, that the question `is not one of Yemen, but the future of the entire Arabian Peninsula`.

This frank statement of UAR`s interest in Yemen indicates why permanent peace in that remote and rugged land has been so elusive.

It also helps explain the forcible removal earlier last month of the nationalist minded-Yemeni Republican Government which was trying to shake off Egyptian domination and seek new peace negotiations with the Yemeni royalists.

The reasons for Cairo`s manoeuvring lie not only in Yemen, but in the wider power struggle with Saudi Arabia and its friends for influence on the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula. In this struggle Yemen is Cairo`s political and physical beachhead.

The last Egyptian troops were to have left Yemen last week, under a peace agreement signed in August 1965 by President Nasser and King Feisal of Saudi Arabia but which became a dead letter months ago.