Word: damascus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Lebanon, Meouchi is frequently consulted by Lebanon's Prime Minister Rashid Karame, a Moslem.* Both Lebanon's Grand Mufti and Jordan's King Hussein are good friends and correspondents of Meouchi's, and Syria's President Nazem El-Koudsi phones him often from Damascus. No Middle Eastern statesman of any faith would think of visiting Lebanon without stopping in at his yellow stone palace at Bkerki, near Beirut. "We are everybody's father," says the patriarch...
...bloodless revolt. Elected Syria's President in December, he was then deposed and jailed by the army officers in March (Coup No. 7) for chasing one of the demons, feudalism, with insufficient vigor. Recalled by the bickering officers two weeks later, Koudsi asked Dr. Bashir El-Azmeh, a Damascus chest surgeon, to form the government that has managed to pick a safe course ever since...
Gone, too, are the doctrinaire economic rules of Nasser's "Arab socialism" that grated on the traditionally free-wheeling Syrians, who love nothing more than driving a good business bargain. The bazaars of Damascus are again bustling after a long stretch of relative austerity. Says Premier Azmeh: "By its very nature, Syria lives on commerce. The Egyptians tried, but you cannot fight nature. We favor free enterprise and private business; we are against feudalism and exploitation. We want economic freedom combined with social justice." A forward step is the Euphrates dam, being built with West German Marks, which will...
...main tool is a lavish foreign-aid program, an estimated $500 million Soviet investment split between military aid (MIGs, tanks, rifles) and such projects as the first railroad linking Syria's Mediterranean port of Latakia with the Jezire agriculture district of the northeast. The Soviet embassy, largest in Damascus, is headquarters for a community that includes a 200-man military mission and 300 technicians...
...Syria's greatest external threat is still Egypt's Nasser; he has never recognized the present government, and publicly treats the Syrians like so many Israelis. Egypt does not allow mail from Syria into the country, and Radio Cairo continues to fire daily diatribes at Damascus. In the past three months, pro-Nasser forces in Syria have tossed more than 100 bombs and staged several minor coup attempts. The young Nasserite officers of the Aleppo garrison, who rose against the Damascus government last April, have been separated and shifted elsewhere by the more moderate generals in control...