Sentence:  There followed a long and sometimes bitter discussion of the feasibility of elections for the fall of 1957 , in which it appears that the Minister of the Interior took the most pessimistic view and that the Istiqlal <WSD>was</WSD> something less than enthusiastic . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)