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Rh Russia also threatened to help Egypt with ’volunteers'. Earlier in the summer its foreign minister had paid a visit to Egypt and Syria, and when President al-Quwadi was repaying the visit to Moscow he was assured by President Klimenti Y. Voroshilov at a reception in his honour of Soviet readiness ’to supply Syria with the necessary assistance to overcome as rapidly as possible the vestiges of colonialism', and in doing so c the Soviet Union claims no privileges or advantages for itself. On two following occasions, when Syria accused Turkey of intending aggression, Russia warned of her readiness to support the Syrian side. Thus did the Soviet Union seek and find common ground for identifying her interests with those of Syria and the rest of the Arab world: hostility to the three great Western powers, arms against Israel and sympathy with the Pan-Arab movement. It was its policy that won friends, not its ideology. Officially the Communist party remained banned in Syria, as it was in other Arab states, though one seat in the parliament was held by its leader. As late as the autumn of 1957 al-Quwatli was still declaring: ’Had it not been for Israel, we would not have felt the need for new weapons; and were it not for the unrelenting preferential treatment of Israel by the United States, we would not have been introduced to new Russians.'

On the other hand, the Eisenhower doctrine offering aid and protection to any Near Eastern country that sought it against Communist threat fell flat and was rejected outright by the Syrian government (June 1957). The tripartite agreement of May 1950 among Great Britain, France and the United States to take immediate action against any Arab state or Israel violating the frontier lacked implementation, as did the avowed policy of 'equal friendship to both sides' declared by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on his return from a trip to the troubled area. The downward curve in Syrian-American relations hit bottom when on August 13, 1957, military authorities 'uncovered' in Damascus 'an American plot to overthrow Syria's present regime'. Rh