SYRIA: The First Arab on the Second Front

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There was another round of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East last week, but for once Henry Kissinger was not involved. This time it was United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, who flew back and forth between Jerusalem and Damascus in a last-ditch effort to extend the mandate of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force on the Golan Heights. At week's end, after exhaustive deliberations in the U.N. Security Council, Syria reluctantly agreed to extend the mandate.

Complex questions were involved in Waldheim's effort to keep the 1,220-man force of Austrians, Iranians, Canadians and Poles on the Golan. Israel was willing to renew the mandate, but only on the same terms as the original mandate worked out by Kissinger in May 1974. Damascus made renewal of the mandate a cliffhanger by presenting some new — and to Israel, unacceptable — demands. Syria argued that any extension of the U.N. force should be tied to a Security Council decision on rights for the Palestinians and to a peace treaty, within six months, calling for Israeli withdrawal from all territory occupied during the Six-Day War of 1967. In fact, last week Syrian President Hafez Assad suggested that the Security Council rather than Geneva should be the forum for future negotiations (see box).

The finish to last week's mandate negotiations was a deliberate diplomatic ploy by the Syrian President. Assad has been described by Kissinger as "the most interesting man in the Middle East." He looks rather like an indulgent schoolteacher, but has been a crack jet pilot and commander of Syria's air force. In negotiations, he at first seems to waffle and waver, yet even Kissinger has come to respect his exquisite sense of timing and his decisiveness in the crunch. Outwardly modest and self-effacing, inwardly tough, Assad today appears to be consolidating his control of Syria, a country that underwent no fewer than 21 coups or coup attempts after the French mandate ended in 1946. Last month Assad celebrated the fifth anniversary of the "corrective movement" that brought him to power as head of Syria's Baathist regime.

Bitter Feud. Assad does not want another Middle East war so soon after 1973 (see box), and is testing diplomatic alternatives while keeping up his military guard. His brinkmanship act over the U.N. mandate last week was in part intended to show the world that Syria plans to regain all of the Golan Heights. Syria has refused to rebuild the ruined city of Quneitra, the ancient Golan capital given up by Israel in the 1974 disengagement agreement. Syrian officials delight in showing foreign visitors the remains of buildings bulldozed by the Israelis before they left.

Israel is willing to make a "cosmetic" adjustment — unacceptable to Syria — of the present disengagement line but will not discuss a larger surrender of territory except in terms of an overall peace settlement. And Damascus, which remains the foremost Arab champion of the Palestinian cause, wants a voice for the P.L.O. at any peace proceedings.