 Assad's government gave civil servants a 20-percent pay raise on the anniversary of the corrective movement that brought him to power.Although the foreign press criticised Syria's reluctance to liberalize its economy, Assad's government refused to modernize the bank system, permit private banks and open a stock exchange.Since the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War, Assad was convinced that the Israelis had won the war by subterfuge; after gaining power, his top foreign-policy priority was to regain the Arab territory lost in the war.