To the Cleaners

From the moment President Nasser unexpectedly observed in a speech last July that "I am not satisfied with what has been achieved in Syria," his new "northern region" has been headed for a housecleaning. In that speech Nasser complained that his Damascus regime had turned up a big deficit and spent all its reserves. Though he did not say so publicly, he was displeased by other developments. He had banned party politics; yet the Baath (socialist) party, the Commu nists and others went on politicking. Syrian Vice President Akram Hourani was acting more like a Prime Minister in Damascus than an executor of decisions taken in Cairo. Syrian Communists still published the newspaper Al Noor in Damascus, and embarrassed Nasser by pouring a reported 8,000 copies daily into neighboring Iraq.

Last week Nasser swung his broom. In a characteristically smooth maneuver for strengthening his own authority without bruising any feelings, he announced a reorganization of the U.A.R. government. The first result was to move Hourani as a member of the new central Cabinet out of Syria and into Egypt. A second was to clip the scheming Colonel Abdel Hamid Ser-raj's power as proconsul in Syria by placing him under the Egyptian Minister of Interior, who would take over Serraj's much-prized authority to appoint Syrian provincial governors. That took care of the two most ambitious power seekers in Damascus. In the shuffle Nasser also dropped his second Syrian Vice President, Sabri el Assali. Then he published decrees abolishing Syria's tribal laws and extending Egyptian land reforms to the northern province, two measures designed to reduce the power of the region's entrenched conservatives.

Nasser is still faced with thunder on the left. Last month, in direct defiance of Nasser's order that his own National Front is the only political party that may operate in Syria, Syrian Communist Chief Khaled Bakdash published an article in Prague proclaiming, "No authority could disband our Communist Party," and ostentatiously returned to Damascus from Czechoslovakia to set up shop again. Since Nasser is not a man to tolerate such defiance, Cairo is guessing that the house-cleaning in Syria is not yet finished.

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