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

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reconciliation conference in Geneva to redistribute national power more fairly. Syria was granted an official role and dispatched to the talks.

The meeting brought other accomplishments. The participants agreed to "freeze" the Israeli-Lebanese accord and formally recognized Lebanon's "Arab identity." The next step comes when the Lebanese warlords are scheduled to reconvene in Geneva. Both Washington and Jerusalem want to retain the substance of the Lebanese-Israeli agreement; Assad considers it dead. If the pact is killed, according to a Western diplomat, Damascus is prepared to accept Gemayel as Lebanese President and work with him to restructure the country's government. Assad and Gemayel were scheduled to meet in Damascus in mid-November, but the Syrian leader's illness intervened. The Lebanese and Syrian foreign ministers, however, have met three times, most recently last week.

Meanwhile Israeli troops continue to suffer casualties and antagonize local Shi'ites in southern Lebanon, and the U.S. Marines remain vulnerable in Beirut. Syria loses nothing by staying put. Says a Western diplomat in Damascus: "Assad knows that Israel is in a no-win situation that saps its military strength and that the Marines cannot stay in Lebanon forever. He is content to wait out both."

Syria's relations with most other Arab s countries range from mutual dis| trust to outright hatred. Saudi y Arabia and the rest of the Persian I Gulf oil states give Damascus »more than $1 billion a year in cash, partly because they deem it essential to have at least one strong Arab state confronting Israel. But the payment also serves as a form of protection money to ensure that Assad does not try to overthrow those conservative regimes. Kuwait, with its large population of Syrian guest workers, feels especially vulnerable. "Assad is a very bright man, but he also is very mean," says a United Arab Emirates official. The Syrian leader and Jordan's King Hussein always have been deeply suspicious of each other. Assad grew furious last April when the monarch held talks with Arafat on President Reagan's 1982 peace plan, which called for linking the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in a loose association with Jordan. In October, when Arafat talked about renewing his discussions with Hussein, the Jordanian ambassadors in New Delhi and Rome were shot, and several car bombs were found in Amman, the Jordanian capital.

Hussein read the terror campaign as a message from Damascus: Don't resume talks with Arafat—or else.

Syria's ties with renegade non-Arab Iran, on the other hand, have been highly profitable for Damascus. When the Iran-Iraq war broke out in 1980, Assad, who has long been bitterly opposed to the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, rushed to support the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Aside from giving Damascus an estimated $600 million in cheap oil, the Ayatullah has bestowed his blessing on Assad's minority Alawites, a sect that most Sunnis consider heretical. In return, Damascus has shut down the Iraqi oil pipeline that slices across Syria to the Mediterranean, thereby slowing the flow of petrodollars to the financially strapped Baghdad government.

According to Western and Israeli intelligence agencies, Syria gave at least tacit approval—and possibly more—to the Iranian