US Officials decry placing of Soviet missiles in Syria

Secretary of State George Shultz said the placement of Soviet-manned missiles in Syria was a sobering and destabilizing event in the Mideast. He told a Senate foreign-operations appropriations subcommittee that the missiles were manned by Soviet personnel and that there was no indication that the Soviets aspired to train Syrians to man the weapons. Earlier, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger said Syria had become another outpost of the Soviet Union, because there were thousands of Soviet advisers operating missile batteries there.