Word: assads
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...acting as middleman between Syria and Israel, just as it did between Egypt and Israel. While Washington backs Syria's initiative in Lebanon, it has also managed so far to calm Israeli fears regarding the purpose of the Syrian presence there. Although Syrian President Hafez Assad has kept other options open, he has begun to take the first hesitant steps in accepting Sadat's view that only the U.S. can get a settlement for the Arabs...
Sadat, meanwhile, has staked so much on the U.S. ability to deliver that any failure could destroy both America's new pre-eminence and Sadat as well. Syria's Assad also has to show some pay off in 1977 for his surprisingly moderate policy to date...
Washington's view was less extreme -"Syria is always on the eve of a coup," joked a Middle East expert-but the State Department does believe that Assad is under considerable pressure. TIME's Beirut bureau chief Karsten Prager, after a visit to Syria last week, confirmed that anti-Assad demonstrations had taken place in Palestinian refugee camps there and as many as 400 Syrian army officers had been detained for questioning or put under house arrest because they opposed the government line on Lebanon. But Prager found no imminent signs of a coup or precautions against...
...Assad's plight was aggravated last week when a meeting of the Prime Ministers of four nations-Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait-that had been scheduled in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh was suddenly postponed. The meeting had been set up by the Saudis and Kuwait to heal the long-simmering feud between Syria and Egypt. But the Egyptians flatly refused to discuss the principal reason for the feud-last year's Egyptian-Israeli disengagement agreement in Sinai, which Syria still resents. The Syrians, meanwhile, would not listen to Egyptian proposals for a debate...
...Backfire. The 13-month Lebanese civil war, in fact, is at the root of Assad's troubles. Worried over the impact on Syria's national security of continuing fighting between Moslems and Christians, Assad earlier this year sought to end the bloodshed with a Pax Syriana imposed by Damascus. But he did it in a way that has since backfired: Syria's government, which is predominantly Moslem, withdrew its support from Lebanese Moslems and the Palestinians fighting alongside them and gave it instead to Maronite Christian President Suleiman Franjieh. The move was meant to allow the controversial...