Bidding for a Bigger Role: Syria seeks to become the prime Arab power

In the heart of old Damascus sits the filigreed stone tomb of Saladin, the 12th century sultan who ruled an empire stretching from Cairo to Baghdad. Worshipers bound for the gleaming Umayyad mosque pass by without pausing, and children scamper in a nearby courtyard oblivious of his presence. Yet as the premier potentate of the region, the conqueror of Jerusalem and the fearless warrior who helped crush the Crusaders, Saladin united a divided region and set off a burst of pride among his people that glowed for centuries.

Though aspirations and methods have been adjusted to the realities of the 1980s, the passion for hegemony lives on in Damascus. Under the shrewd, ruthless, brutally dictatorial guidance of President Hafez Assad, 53, Syria has been making a bid for the past decade to grasp the torch of Arab unity and emerge as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East. By keeping its 62,000 troops in Lebanon and by supporting factions opposed to the government of Lebanese President Amin Gemayel, Syria has become the key player in that fractured country's future. By fueling the raging rebellion within the Palestine Liberation Organization against Chairman Yasser Arafat, Syria is intent on seizing control of the Palestinian movement. Finally, by bullying and cajoling its Arab neighbors, Syria is building what it hopes will be a united front to reach its ultimate objective: a comprehensive, made-in-Damascus solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In pursuing those goals, Syria is pushing the battle-scarred region perilously close to yet another major war. Even if Syria does not risk confronting the U.S. as directly as it did in the skies over Lebanon last week, Assad has forced both the U.S. and the Soviet Union to become more deeply and more dangerously entwined in the Middle East muddle than perhaps either superpower would like. After its humiliating rout by Israeli forces during their 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon, Syria has rebuilt its stock of military hardware to even greater levels with help from its chief sponsors, the Soviets.

Though the Reagan Administration initially sent U.S. Marines to Beirut last year to ensure the safe departure of

Yasser Arafat's brigades from the Lebanese capital, Assad has helped keep U.S. forces mired there far longer than Washington anticipated. Faced with an Israeli-Lebanese accord that provided for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Lebanon but failed to take account of Syria, Assad responded by stoutly refusing to pull out his own soldiers and by stirring the embers of hatred among the country's myriad factions against Israelis and Americans alike. The Reagan Administration, moreover, is convinced that Syria had prior knowledge of, and perhaps even masterminded, the October suicide-bombing of U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut that killed 240 servicemen. For the past two months, Syrian antiaircraft batteries have taken potshots at U.S. reconnaissance planes over Syrian-controlled parts of Lebanon; when the barrage intensified two weeks ago, the U.S. responded with its Sunday-morning reprisal raid. With each passing week, Syria seems to grow bolder in striking out at the U.S. presence in Lebanon. Says a Syrian foreign ministry official: "Assad will do anything to convince the Americans that the road to peace must lead