Word: assad
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...unconditional loan guarantees on the peace process. Arabs are convinced that any such guarantees will go toward the settling of Soviet Jews in the occupied territories, whether they are applied directly to that purpose or simply free up other Israeli funds for settlement construction. Syria's President Hafez Assad might refuse to attend the peace conference, taking Jordan and the Palestinians with him. "This is a classic lose-lose proposition," says a senior Administration official. "If the bill provides for guarantees without conditions, we lose the Arabs. If it provides for guarantees with conditions, we lose the Israelis...
Syria, facing the future without its own longtime sponsor, the Soviet Union, also needs friends in the West and has signed on to the U.S. plan for a regional peace conference. President Hafez Assad has apparently decided to move to negotiations in hopes of reclaiming the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. "He can do that a lot more effectively through diplomacy than terrorism," says a Western official...
...Assad can see that he has little or no chance of forcibly taking back the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in the 1967 war. The last slight hope for Soviet support for another war was snuffed out by a personal message Assad received from Gorbachev early in July. Its proposals, almost identical with those Bush had made, strongly reinforced U.S. arguments. Soviet officials delicately avoid calling it pressure, but one explains, "Gorbachev just sent a letter expressing our feeling that cooperation with the U.S. would be constructive and important...
...clincher in Assad's decision to sit down with Israel may have been the way Bush explained the U.S. role. First get to the peace conference, said Bush; give Shamir his procedural points. But once negotiations begin, the U.S. and the Soviets are committed to follow through to a comprehensive settlement. Washington's foundations for the settlement, Bush reiterated, are Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which call on Israel to trade land it has occupied since 1967 for security guarantees from the Arab states. In the U.S. view, the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem...
...Assad undoubtedly realized that he was playing into Israel's hands by hanging back. Shamir had no need to say yes, and Washington had no leverage on Israel's decision until Syria agreed to the conference. Now Assad has focused the pressure on Israel...