On 3 April, five of the six Nasserist ministers resigned from Bitar's government in protest at the Military Committee's purge of dozens of Nasserist officers.[3][note 1] In Bitar's second cabinet, formed in May, Droubi and two other pro-Nasser Ba'athist ministers (Abd al-Karim al-Zuhur and Jamal al-Atassi) were not included.[4] Droubi kept his position in the NCRC and on 19 June was part of a high-ranking delegation that included Bitar, Aflaq and Chief-of-Staff Ziad al-Hariri, the official leader of the 1963 coup, making a state visit to Algeria. During the visit, dozens of Hariri's politically independent loyalists in the officer corps were purged by the Ba'athist's Committee. Soon after Hariri returned to Syria to respond to the purges, he too was dismissed.