Word: syria
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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President Sukarno last week was in the midst of a ceremony installing the new Indonesian Ambassador to Syria when suddenly another idea hit him. Turning on a small cluster of newsmen at the Merdeka Palace, Sukarno stormed, "I told you before that I would kick out all foreign correspondents who report lies. To hell with your lies! All correspondents...
...Jews on Saturday, Christians on Sunday-a situation that could conceivably lead to an ecumenical three-day weekend for all. In Saudi Arabia and Libya, Friday is kept strictly as Allah's day and Sunday is a normal work day; but in half-Christian Lebanon and Western-influenced Syria and Turkey, many Moslem businessmen close down on Friday only long enough to visit their mosques, although they shut down completely on Sunday. Jordan's government offices in Amman close on Friday, but in Jordanian Jerusalem, one of Christianity's most holy places, Sunday is generally observed...
...shift grew out of a split in Syria's ruling Pan-Arab Baath Party between General Salah Jadid, leader of a powerful clique of pro-Peking officers, and Strongman General Amin Hafez, top dog in Syria since 1963. At the Casablanca conference of Arab leaders last September, Hafez pledged Syria to an agreement not to meddle in other states' internal affairs. Objecting, the Jadid group blamed a "right-wing reactionism" for the moderating tendencies in other Arab nations, argued for Syrian leadership to restore the "progressive Arab socialist outlook...
...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 were arrested. In a ten-hour showdown behind closed doors, Hafez retained the support of Baath's eleven-member "International Command...
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...