Word: baathist
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...Arab world. Twelve members of oil-rich Kuwait's 50-man legislature formally requested unity with the U.A.R. Even Nasser's traditional enemies, the monarchies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, made efforts at reconciliation. Jordan's King Hussein discreetly let 56 Nasserite and Baathist political prisoners out of jail and sent off friendly feelers to Nasser. In Saudi Arabia, alarmed by a pro-Nasser demonstration that cost 19 lives, Premier Prince Feisal tried to modernize his regime by allotting $1,200,000 as compensation to slave owners who would free their chattels...
...cream great hall of Kubbah Palace, Nasser proposed a sharing of guilt. "The presence of Baath in the Arab homeland is a necessity," he declared. "The resignation of the Baath ministers from the U.A.R. government in 1961 was a mistake. Accepting the resignations was also a mistake." The Baathist delegates clapped and cheered this burying of the hatchet. In a startlingly un-Arab spirit of amity and compromise, both sides accepted the other's good faith and minimum terms...
Sticking point is Nasser's insistence on a single political party for the whole U.A.R., modeled on his own Arab Socialist Union in Egypt. Since this would swallow up and probably destroy the Baath movement, Baathists have held out for a looser, more representative system, including the Baath-created National Front in Iraq, and the Baathist-Nasserite Unionist Front in Syria. In the end, Nasser would probably have his way on this, as on other limitations to political democracy. A Cairo spokesman explained, in a phase definitely not borrowed from U.S. democracy, that "freedom will be guaranteed...
Damascus radio went on the air proclaiming the Baathist slogans of "Unity, Freedom, Socialism!" A jubilant Syrian army officer at a border post said. ''We want unity, not with Nasser, but with all Arabs." As in Iraq, the Syrian National Council of the Revolutionary Command insisted on anonymity. The new 20-man Cabinet has only two military men, and the Baath party is strongly represented. New Premier Salah El-Bitar, 45, is a former Syrian Foreign Minister and a Baathist with strong sympathies toward Arab unity. A tall, hulking Damascene with dark, brooding eyes and brilliantined hair...
...revolution in Syria is unlikely to be the final firecracker on the string. Baathist and Nasserite elements are known to be at work in Jordan, especially among the Palestinian Arabs. Saudi Arabia can no longer trust its small air force or even the officer corps of its regular army. If it comes to fighting, the Saudi rulers will depend on their "white army," the Bedouin tribesmen traditionally loyal to the King. But if the road ahead looks rough for the monarchies, it by no means is smooth for the "liberated" states, since victory most often presents only new occasions...