Mustafa Tlass
Between 27 and 29 April 1987, Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, along with the Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass and Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam, visited the Soviet Union, when he asked to acquire the S-300 missile system, but Mikhail Gorbachev refused to deliver, due to U.S. and Israeli rejection and Syrian accumulated debt from previous arms deals. On 6 July 1999, Assad visited Moscow to finalize an arms deal worth $2 billion.