Slippage to the Left

Behind all the wild exaggerations of a Soviet takeover in Syria, and the denials which did too much to minimize them, Syria was in fact taking a sharp turn to the left. The New York Herald Tribune reported from Paris, from a source neither French nor American, that Communist technicians would take actual command of Syrian units using Soviet-furnished arms. Another story reported 500 Czech technicians about to be sent to work in Syria. In London British officials said they have evidence that the Soviets are already subsidizing leading members of Syria's ruling army clique.

U.S. officials have discounted such reports, though the State Department conceded last week that the newest Syrian Cabinet was more leftish than State anticipated. Syria was the most outspoken Arab country in acclaiming Soviet "intervention"' at the time of last November's Middle East ceasefire. When the Russians intervened with murder and treachery in Hungary, Syrian newspapers printed nothing but Tass accounts of what went on in Budapest. Last week's Cabinet change reflected a coming into the open, if not coming fully to power, of the pro-Soviet and pro-Nasser clique headed by the Syrian army's mysterious 31-year-old Colonel Abdel Hamid Serraj.

Representatives of the Populists, Syria's largest party, were shuffled out. The leftists could now count on a majority because so many moderate members of Parliament had fled the country, and the moderates who stayed were not strong. "I'm tired of being a civilian front for an army clique," said one minister visiting in Lebanon. A nationalist moderate himself, Premier Sabri el Assali managed to keep the Interior Ministry with its police authority himself, and to keep" Serraj's closest friends out of the Cabinet.

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