SYRIANS WANT KING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 838, 5 December 1929, Page 15

SYRIANS WANT KING

WOULD SOLVE MANDATE PROBLEM

. EX-RULER OF HEDJAZ A Cairo newspaper, the “Assaghr,” reports that there is a strong movement in Syria in favour of a kiug for that country. At Damascus, says the message, there is rapidly growing a Royalist party which holds the view that all political divergencies between Syrians and France as the mandatory Power can only be solved by the presence of a king in Syria. The movement has become so strong that M. Brouillard. the acting High Commissioner at Damascus, invited a delegation of the Royalist party to meet him and confer on the matter. Their views have been reported to Paris. There has been some talk from another source, says a “Daily Chronicle” correspondent, inviting ex-King Ali of the Hedjaz, brother of the Emir Abdullah of Transjordania, and of King Feisal of Iraq, to accept the crown. Indirect approaches have been made to him. but well-informed persons rather doubt if he will agree, in the present circumstances, to the proposal, mainly on account of the latent enmity which exists between the French and the Hachimite House, consequent on King Feisal’s ejection from Syria by the French when they were about to assume the mandate for that country.