Marching Back from the Brink

By Marguerite Johnson

Two Arab antagonists cool a jittery confrontation

Rather like the Duke of York in the old nursery rhyme, Syria and Jordan marched to the brink of war last week, then marched away. For a few tense days, however, the two Arab antagonists had provoked international jitters that another hot war was about to start in the Middle East. After nearly a week of intense shuttle diplomacy between Damascus and Amman to devise a face-saving formula, Saudi Arabia's Deputy Prime Minister, Prince Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz, proudly proclaimed that his peacemaking efforts had been "crowned with success." He announced that Syria had agreed to a gradual withdrawal of the troops it had dispatched to the Jordanian border. Officials in Amman, though, were initially skeptical. Said Jordanian Minister of Information Adnan Abu Odeh: "We will make our judgment known when we see the last Syrian soldiers withdrawing from their positions." Then, in a further effort to heal the breach between the two antagonistic countries, King Khalid of Saudi Arabia invited both Jordan's King Hussein and Syria's President Hafez Assad to Riyadh for a detailed discussion of their differences.

Neither side really wanted to see the squabble erupt into open battle. One reason is that the Arab world is deeply fragmented as a result of the war between Iraq and Iran. The open support of Jordan and the tacit backing of Saudi Arabia and the gulf states for Syria's archenemy, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, has left Syria feeling isolated and threatened. Some military analysts believe that one of Assad's motives in provoking the border confrontation was to blunt the possibility that Jordanian troops would be dispatched to Iraq to help in its stalemated struggle with Iran. As one U.S. analyst put it last week, "Assad wanted to remind everybody that Syria was still there."

The Jordanian-Syrian confrontation began just before an Arab summit in Amman two weeks ago. Assad learned that the new "moderate" axis of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq intended to attack Syria at the conference for supporting Iran, a Muslim but non-Arab nation, in the gulf war. Syria abruptly announced that it would boycott the session, and so did Algeria, Libya, South Yemen and the Palestine Liberation Organization. At the same time, Syria massed a total of 36,000 troops along the Jordanian border to show its displeasure with King Hussein. The King responded by positioning 24,000 troops of his own, nearly half of Jordan's regular army.

A major Syrian accusation was that Jordan has been "arming, training and financing" extremist elements of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, which wants to topple Assad's ten-year-old regime. Syrian television recently reported that Jordanian Prime Minister Mudar Badran had even visited Muslim Brotherhood camps near Irbid on the Jordanian side of the 240-mile common frontier. Damascus further charged that the Muslim Brotherhood, operating from clandestine camps in Jordan, has been able to launch a two-year campaign of assassinations and bombings within Syria. King Hussein has firmly denied the Syrian allegations, although he has legalized political activities by the Brotherhood inside Jordan.

The Syrians have also charged that Hussein is on the verge of collaborating with Israel, the U.S. and Egypt by joining the stalled Middle East peace talks as a spokesman for the Palestinian cause. Syrian radio quoted accusations by P.L.O. radicals that Hussein has been suppressing the Palestinians in collusion with Israel. As it happens, Jordan endorsed a resolution at the Amman summit that reaffirmed the role of the P.L.O. as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian cause. Still, Syrian fears have increased as a result of recent statements made by both U.S. President-elect Ronald Reagan and Israeli Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres to the effect that Jordan was the "key" to achieving a Palestinian settlement.

For all its bluff and bluster, Syria was hardly m a position to launch a shooting war. Its Soviet-supplied 200,000-man armed forces are almost three times as large as Jordan's, but they are scattered across disparate fronts that require constant vigilance. The Syrians have peacekeeping units in Lebanon, a 20,000-man praetorian guard to shield Assad's government at home, and critical border posts facing Israel in the Golan Heights Iraq to the east and Turkey to the north' Moreover, the Israelis warned that they would not remain idle if Syria attacked Jordan. Said an Israeli diplomat: "It would be a mistake to let Syria overrun Jordan."

For his part, King Hussein was also eager to dampen the dispute. He said he was "open to all reasonable suggestions for resolving this pointless crisis." An astute survivor who has reigned for 28 years over a population that is now about 65% Palestinian, the Jordanian King clearly wants to dodge any fight that could turn into a challenge to his throne. To be on the safe side, however, he called on the U.S. last week to speed up shipments of spare parts, antitank rockets, surface-to-air missiles and other defense materiel to his country. Washington readily agreed and the first flight left late last week But a senior State Department analyst cautioned that the lessening of tensions may be only temporary. Said he: "As long as the Iran-Iraq war continues and there are disagreements about who speaks for or about the P.L.O., it's not going to quiet down completely." step-up of American arms shipments to Jordan led the official Soviet news agency, TASS, to charge that the U.S. was "taking advantage of tensions to aggravate the situation." The Soviet press pointedly played up the ratification last week of a new Treaty of Friendship between Syria and the U.S.S.R. Some neutral observers believe that the friendship treaty, and a visit by Soviet Vice President Vasili Kuznetsov, gave Assad the psychological boost nec essary to stage his current confrontation.

Even so, the Soviets could take little comfort from the divisions in the Arab camp. Moscow's Middle East policy is based on maintaining a solid Arab front in opposition to the U.S. and Israel. If Syria and Iraq were both to be involved in wars with their neighbors, such a policy would lie in shambles.

--By Marguerite Johnson. Reported by David Aikman/ Jerusalem and William Drozdiak/ Amman

With reporting by David Aikman; William Drozdiak

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