Word: assad
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Stan Hopkins, but the effect was precisely that. Hartley and Democratic Congressman Edward Markey could not identify the Prime Minister of Israel (Yitzhak Shamir). Markey came close: he guessed Moshe Arens, who is the Defense Minister. Bartley alone failed to get the name of Syria's President (Hafez Assad). Republican Elliot Richardson, a former Secretary of Defense, estimated the military's share of the budget (28%) at just 7.5%. All seven Democrats were stumped by the toughest questions they were asked: the amount of the current defense budget ($258 billion), the number of U.S. troops overseas...
...June 8, Habib was asked by Begin to carry a message to President Hafez Assad of Syria: if P.L.O. artillery in the Syrian lines was pulled back to the 40-km mark, there would be no need for Syria
...Israel to fight. The next day, while Habib was in Damascus waiting to deliver this message, a second message arrived from Begin to Assad, warning that the Syrians should withdraw the additional surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries that the Israelis claimed were being brought in to reinforce Syrian positions. Habib had delivered the Israeli warnings to the Syrian government but was still waiting to see Assad when the Israeli air force attacked the Syrian SAM sites in the Beka'a Valley, destroying them all and shooting down 23 Syrian MiGs while losing no Israeli aircraft. This sudden attack...
...issue involved a war that was daily claiming hundreds of lives. Clark assured me that this was, hi fact, the President's decision. Astonished, I phoned Reagan at Camp David and explained that Habib was already en route to Damascus to keep an appointment with Syrian President Assad; he simply could not wait. When Reagan responded, I detected a note of puzzlement in his voice. He knew nothing about the instructions to Habib, and I gained the impression that he had not even received them...
After suffering a serious heart ailment in November, Assad, 53, has slowly eased back into a normal working day. Three weeks ago he reshuffled his Cabinet, a move that some analysts interpreted as an attempt to balance power among potential successors. Though slightly wan, he remains forceful and engaging. In his modest office in Damascus last week, the Syrian President received Time Inc. Editor in Chief Henry Grunwald, TIME Managing Editor Ray Cave and Chief of Correspondents Richard Duncan for the first interview he has granted a U.S. publication since the suicidal bombing of the Marine headquarters in Beirut last...