President Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt in January 1958 meeting with a group of Syrian officers who came to Cairo to plead for Syria’s merger with Egypt. He is shaking hands with Syria’s Chief-of-Staff Afif al-Bizreh. To the left stands Nasser’s right-hand-man Marshal Abd al-Hakim Amer and next to him is General Amin al-Hafez, who became president of Syria after the Baathist revolution in March 1963.