SYRIA: New Tenants

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Having finally evicted tough little Dictator Adib Shishekly, Syria's successful conspirators spent their energies last week in emptying the ashtrays, rearranging the furniture, scratching the name off the mailbox and generally trying to erase all the signs that Shishekly had ever lived there.

Joining together in uneasy collaboration, the groups which overturned the Shishekly regime 1) abrogated Shishekly's martial law decree; 2) closed up the offices of his personal political party (the Arab Liberation Movement); 3) abolished the 1953 "Shishekly" constitution, which concentrated all power in the hands of the executive; and 4) announced that there would be general elections soon—perhaps in three months.

To run things until the elections—or until someone else decides to move in for himself—the mixture of soldiers, nationalists, socialists and others who joined in ousting Shishekly picked as new Premier stout, bespectacled Sabri el Assali, a right-wing Damascus lawyer. Around him was assembled a Cabinet notable mostly for its lack of political notables. One exception: Defense Minister Marouf Dawalibi, who was Premier when Shishekly assumed power two years ago.

Dawalibi, 50, an oyster-smooth politician who suggests a corpulent Fu Manchu, is a man of pronounced dislikes (among them: Jews, Britons, Americans). In World War II he worked in Berlin for a time with the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem. He professes not to fear Russia: "The Arabs would prefer a thousandfold to become a Soviet republic than a prey to world Jewry."

In Beirut, where he lived in exile until last fortnight's revolution, Dawalibi recently told a TIME correspondent: "The West wants us to forget about the enemy on our border [Israel] and worry about people thousands of miles away [Russia]. The West thinks we ought to follow them, just when they've helped the Jews to take away the Arab's country . . . The trouble with you Americans is that you always want other people to take your advice. You don't take anyone else's advice, and why should we?"