Defense Secretary Harold Brown’s annual report to Congress justifying the Defense Department’s new budget has disclosed that Soviet and East European military technicians in Syria have exceeded all those in the Middle East and South Asia except for Afghanistan.
Brown’s statistics said that Soviet and East European military personnel in 1978 in Syria totaled 2,580 while the total in the remainder of the Mid-East and South Asia was 2,050. This was made up of 1,200 in Iraq, 150 in North Yemen, 550 in South Yemen and 150 in India. In Afghanistan as of Jan. 4 there were 50,000 Communist technicians, he said. Cuban forces numbered 150 in North Yemen and 1,000 in South Yemen.
“That instability in the Middle East will be the rule rather than the exception seems highly probable for some years to come,” Brown reported. He noted that “the moderate Arab states, except for Oman and the Sudan, have opposed” the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and “Iraq and Iran may yet come into formal conflict.”
“The situation in southern Lebanon, where Israeli-supported Christian militia forces continue to confront Palestinian guerrillas and Moslem leftists, could erupt into large-scale violence and draw in both Syria and Israel,” Brown said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
