Word: jadid
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...coup grew out of a split between the party's leftist moderates, led by Hafez, and a powerful, pro-Peking group of officers led by General Salah Jadid. Where Hafez sought closer ties with Egypt, Jadid demanded a complete break. Where Hafez pledged Syria to a nonintervention agreement with other Arab nations, Jadid wanted Syria free to meddle where it might. As for Hafez' Russian-style socialism, Jadid insisted on a far stricter Red Chinese version. Last December their feud exploded into the open when Hafez discovered a Jadid plot to overthrow him. Hafez chased his rival underground...
Early one morning pro-Jadid troops and armored units rolled up Damascus' fashionable Abu Rummana Street, and began blasting away at Hafez' home and the tough desert troops guarding it. For hours the battle raged-interrupted only by one brief pause when the rebels permitted Hafez' wife and a wounded daughter to escape. Outmanned and outgunned, the defenders were finally whittled down to three men, who came out with hands up and holding a white flag. They were gunned down in their tracks, and a placard hung on the front of the demolished home: "This...
...nevertheless the rebels went on the air to call themselves "the provisional command of the Baath Party," and termed the coup a party affair to "correct" a situation that "threatened to impose a dictatorial regime on the country." As their chief of state, they named Noureddin Attassi, a Jadid-style leftist and Hafez' onetime second-incommand. As Premier, they appointed -once again-Youssef Zayyen...
...weeks, the debate raged between the opposing Baathist cliques, and being Syrians, Jadid's men naturally began plotting a coup to topple Hafez from his position as head of the powerful Presidency Council, which serves as a sort of collective chief of state. Two days before the revolt was to come off last month, the garrison commander at Horns jumped the gun by arresting three pro-Hafez officers-counting on Syria's notoriously poor telephone and telegraph communications to keep the word from reaching the capital 90 miles away. The news got back anyway, and the conspiratorial commanders...
Picked to form a new government last week, replacing the pro-Jadid Premier Youssef Zayyen, was Salah Bitar, 53, Baath co-founder who holds that "to take Marxism as an absolute and comprehensive ideology conflicts with the Arab revolution, which is basically nationalist." Syria would remain socialist, if somewhat less stridently. Abroad this would mean happier relations with its moderating socialist as well as non-socialist Arab neighbors (last week Damascus received an envoy from Kuwait to renew negotiations for a $56 million Kuwaiti loan), and at home a better break for what remains of Syria's long-beleaguered...