Word: damascus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Broadcast over the Baghdad and Damascus radios, the statement claimed that the agreement signed in Cairo last April promised collective leadership but that Nasser, to preserve his "dictatorial existence," had tried to grab control of the new union-even inciting the "criminal" July 18 abortive coup in Syria, which was crushed at a cost of scores of dead. Calling themselves the true leaders of Arab federation, the Baathists declared that Egypt was still welcome to join, urged "popular forces in the Egyptian region" to indulge in an "upsurge and smashing of barriers in order to join with the other revolutionary...
Cairo did not reply for 24 hours, then roared back that Baath had ruined "the dearest aspiration of the Arabs, stabbing the union and tearing the charter into pieces." The Egyptians reserved their choicest words for the Baath lead ers in Damascus, who, Nasser's Arab Socialist Union said, had "sunk Syria in a sea of blood." Cairo even taunted the Syrians with a ditty. A singer asks, "Where are the free?" and a chorus answers, "They entered Mezza" (a Damascus prison). The singer then asks, "Where are the revolutionaries?" and the chorus comes back, "In Mezza...
...Syria experienced its twelfth attempted coup d'état in 14 years and the only one to throw away the script. Led by ex-Colonel Jassem Alwan, who had already staged an unsuccessful coup last year, a band of army officers and civilians launched a morning attack in Damascus on the radio station and the Defense Ministry. Diplomats in Britain's new green and yellow embassy got off a cable home: "Heavy fighting in the heart of the city...
...demand for a "national front" federation in which his supporters would have equal strength with Baath. After a ten-hour conference with Nasser, President Atassi flew home and rushed to the military hospital to kiss the soldiers wounded in defending his regime. At week's end Damascus radio was still making brief, shrill broadcasts insisting that the revolt was crushed, but the country remained buttoned up against the outside world, with borders, airports and harbors sealed...
Nonexistent Ally. While his nation suffered, Yemen's President Sallal was on a triumphal tour of the Middle East. Though plagued by conspiracies at home-he crushed two "imperialist" plots in his own regime before leaving-Sallal got tremendous ovations from street crowds in Damascus and Baghdad. In lordly style, he urged the Baathist leaders of Syria and Iraq to disperse the "summer cloud" of their differences with Egypt's Nasser, and grandly offered the virtually nonexistent Yemen republican army as an ally in repulsing "Zionist and imperialist aggressors...