MIDDLE EAST: Iraq and Syria: A New Axis for Unity

Their merger moves ahead "like a rocket to the moon "

"Unity between Syria and Iraq will become the axis for a strong, unified-Arab policy," declares Syria's Information Minister Ahmed Iskander, 35. "We have gone far beyond a first step." The Iraqis clearly agree. "By the will of God," says Iraq's Vice Chairman Saddam Hussein Takriti, "the unity between our two countries will be made permanent." The negotiations are proceeding, adds an excited Foreign Ministry official in Baghdad, "like a rocket to the moon!"

Syria and Iraq have been enemies for years, ruled by feuding wings of the Baathist Party. So they surprised just about everybody in the Middle East when they announced that they were seriously thinking of merging into one unified state.

Under the plan, Syria and Iraq would share their oil and water, and would unite their military establishments into a force of 440,000 troops, 4,500 tanks and more than 730 combat aircraft. The Defense, Foreign and Information ministries of the two governments would also be united, and the presidency would rotate every six months between Damascus and Baghdad.

There is a certain political logic to the merger. The militant Arab states, and even many of the more moderate ones, were badly shaken by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's peace initiative. With Egypt neutralized, they would have a hard time presenting a credible threat to Israel. But a united Syria and Iraq, acting with the cooperation of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, would constitute what one Jerusalem official calls "a serious military defense problem along our northern borders." Moreover, the governments of Syria and Iraq are worried about the current upheaval in Iran and the rising militancy of Iran's Shi'ite Muslim majority. Iraq is particularly worried because it too has a large Shi'ite population.

Some Middle East experts wonder whether the merger will last any longer than the ill-fated 1958-61 union of Syria and Egypt. Nonetheless, there are already signs of a basic change in relations between the two countries. Troops have been reduced along the common border. After years of vilifying each other's countries, radio stations in Damascus and Baghdad are broadcasting messages of homage and brotherhood. Soon pipelines will again carry Iraqi oil across Syria to the Mediterranean.

The merger plan represents more of a turnaround for Iraq, a country that for 20 years has been a kind of odd-man-out in the Arab world.

Since 1974, Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Bakr, 64, has been quietly moderating his government's foreign policy even as he modernized his country's landscape. Last week TIME's Cairo bureau chief, Dean Brelis, visited Iraq, a California-size country of 12 million people, with 34,500 bbl. in proven oil reserves. His report:

Today's Baghdad positively throbs with progress. The streets are clean, the traffic surprisingly orderly, the shops filled with consumer goods from Western Europe and the U.S. The city, built along the banks of the sluggish Tigris River, was one of the principal locales of The Thousand and One Nights. Today, with 20-story buildings rising above its graceful mosques, it looks every bit the citadel of Baath power that may soon stretch from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.