Lt. Gen. Tawfiq Nizameddine dies in Damascus

Lt. Gen. Tawfiq Nizameddine, founder and former commander of the Syrian Army died on Monday in Damascus. Present at the funeral ceremony were a number of Syrian officials, citizens and delegations from his birthplace, al-Qamshli, in the northern part of Syria.

The deceased was born in 1914. He joined the military academy in 1932. In 1945, he, together with elite army officers in the Syrian army, announced the separation of the Syrian Army from the French army in al-Abu Kamal province in northern Syria.

In 1947 he was appointed as chairman for the third branch in the army general command in Damascus, and he was among the six army generals who carried out a coup against Sami al-Hannawi in 1950 and stopped attempts made to annex Syria to Iraq under the rule of the British mandate.

He resigned in the era from 1952-1954 from the army when Adib al-Sheshakli was in power. In 1954 he took part in the coup against al-Sheshakli and restored democratic and constitutional life to Syria. He was appointed the army's deputy chief of staff and the deputy military commander. He was the first to sign an arms deal with the East and broke the monopoly of the West (before Egypt) with Czechoslovakia. He signed the largest arms deal with Russia at US $3 billion in 1957.

He was among the advocates of Arab unity, but on a democratic and constitutional basis. He established the joint military leadership with Egypt and Jordan and was the first to negotiate with the late Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser on unity on "federal" grounds.

Nizameddine is survived by ten children. After he resigned from the army he lived on his retirement salary and revenues from a small agricultural plot in his province.