Word: assad
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...walked into an ornate conference room in Hafez Assad's Damascus palace last week, Madeleine Albright stole a quick glance at the door to a nearby bathroom. The only excitement during her previous meeting with the Syrian President had been getting locked in that bathroom until a security agent pried open the door. She'd avoid the room this time, but Albright expected the same demands from Assad that had so far blocked talks with Israel on returning the Golan Heights to Syria. Twenty minutes into the meeting, however, the Secretary of State and her Middle East aide, Dennis Ross...
...Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa settled into a getting-to-know-you session in Washington Wednesday, after the U.S. brought them together despite Israel's refusal of Syria's precondition that it publicly commit to withdrawing from the Golan Heights. "Syria's President Hafez Assad obviously got what he needed to hear to restart talks," says TIME Jerusalem bureau chief Lisa Beyer. "The essence of Barak's message to him before the talks would have been that Israel would withdraw from all of the Golan in exchange for security guarantees, although the two sides...
...monitoring as a precodition for withdrawal. Despite security fears, peace with Syria would mean that all of Israel's immediate Arab neighbors recognize the 51-year-old Jewish state as a permanent reality, and that remains an enticing prospect for Barak - to be pursued with urgency before the ailing Assad leaves the scene, potentially complicating any peace moves. Right now, Israeli opposition to ceding the Golan actually suits Barak's negotiating strategy by emphasizing the difficulty of Israel's concessions. "Polls may show Israelis divided over handing over the Golan, but they also showed Israelis opposed to handing back...
...good news is that Barak wants to negotiate by mid-February the outlines of a settlement with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and begin talks with Syrian President Hafez Assad on returning the Golan Heights. The aging Arafat and Assad both realize this is probably their best and last chance to reach agreements. But Arafat and Barak are still haggling over a small parcel of Israeli-occupied territory. Albright wants to stay out of petty real estate disputes and keep Barak and Arafat focused on resolving bigger questions. But the men still distrust one another so much that it's hard...
Sometimes it is: McCain will often fill his travel time with animated discussions about global hot spots from Chechnya to China. When a local New Hampshire pol asked him a question about Lebanon last month, he unfurled a lengthy answer that included a consideration of whether Syrian President Hafez Assad will be succeeded by his son Bashar or his brother Rifaat. While McCain swipes at Bush's reliance on foreign-policy gurus--"When there is a crisis," he says, "I won't have to consult advisers"--he talks shop with many members of the foreign-policy firmament, including Jeane Kirkpatrick...