President Gamal Abd al-Nasser of Egypt receiving General Lu’ayy al-Atasi, the president of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) of Syria in 1963, weeks after the Baath Party came to power in Damascus. Atasi and Nasser discussed restoring the Syrian-Egyptian Union of 1958-1961 but the talks collapsed when the Baathists crushed a Nasserist attempt to seize the state in July 1963.