| Summary/Abstract |
FRANCE PLAYED A SPECIAL ROLE in developing the Syrian statehood partly through the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement (that, in all justice, should have been called the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov* Agreement) signed by the UK, France and Russia in 1916 in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) that was moving under French control (in case of the Entente's victory in World War One) practically the entire territory of what is now Syria and Lebanon and part of Iraq with the city of Mosul on it. Officially annulled in 1917, when the Bolshevist government of Russia had published the secret agreements of the Entente, it was, on the whole, realized (with the exception of the "Russian segment"). France lost its Iraqi "share" to Great Britain in exchange for the right to extract oil in Mosul.
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