Word: assad
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When George Shultz began his diplomatic hopscotch across the Middle East last week, he candidly admitted that he did not expect much to come of it. The results seem to have lived down to his expectations fully. In Damascus, Syrian President Hafez Assad told the Secretary of State privately what he has been saying publicly for two months: Syria adamantly opposes the agreement worked out last May calling for Israel to withdraw its troops from Lebanon, and therefore Syria refuses to pull out its own forces. Admitted Shultz at trip's end: "I can't point...
...Shultz had to wait in Jidda while King Fahd spent the day at prayer in Mecca. The two finally met after midnight. In the course of the talks, which went on until 2:30 a.m., Saudi officials made it clear that they were not going to lean on Assad; they felt that the Israeli-Lebanese agreement favored Jerusalem...
...rebels stormed a convoy of twelve P.L.O. vehicles in the western Syrian town of Homs. Arafat, who was safely in Damascus, declared that a dozen of his men had been killed or wounded in the attack. Hours later, the long-smoldering feud between Arafat and Syrian President Hafez Assad broke into the open as the Syrian government brusquely expelled Arafat, advising him that in the future he would be unwelcome in either Syria or the Bekaa Valley. He left immediately for Tunis to hold emergency meetings with his top lieutenants. By week's end he was in Czechoslovakia, presumably...
...that the P.L.O.'s leadership has been corrupt and ineffective. But these grievances would probably not have sparked an active rebellion without the interference of Libya and, more important, Syria. The P.L.O. has always relied heavily on Syria for military and political support, although relations between Arafat and Assad have been cool for a long time...
...talked at length with Jordan's King Hussein about the possibility that Hussein would, in association with the Palestinians, enter into negotiations with Israel and the U.S. on President Reagan's proposal for a confederal relationship between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Assad bitterly opposed the U.S. initiative. His objections: it did not envision a significant negotiating role for the Syrians, nor did it address itself to the problem of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed...