Word: assad
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...under way in Syria, and with it could come the best chance for regional peace since Israel was founded 51 years ago. That may not be the way it looks from Washington, where officials are struggling to get the two sides just to sit down together. Yet inside Syria, Assad, 69, ailing with heart disease, diabetes and prostate problems, appears increasingly anxious to ensure Bashar's position and with it the Assad legacy. And to make that happen, Assad seems in more of a hurry to make a deal to regain the Golan Heights from Israel than...
...there is a clue to the future of Middle East peace, it may be in the fresher look that President Hafez Assad's defiant old regime is sporting these days. Almost gone are the giant Orwellian portraits of the Syrian leader that once seemed to loom over every traffic intersection. Instead, less threatening pictures of Assad's son and heir apparent Bashar, 34, decorate billboards and shopwindows from the Damascus suq to the Mediterranean coast. The favorite depicts Assad in an almost holy trinity with Bashar and Basil, Assad's idealized eldest boy and chosen successor until his car-crash...
...encouraging sign is that Assad, whose country remains on the State Department's list of terrorist states, is promoting his son as the sort of Syrian leader with whom the world, Israel included, will be able to do business. Bashar talks the language of economics rather than politics, and, until his brother's death, had chosen a career in ophthalmology rather than following his father's path into the army and power...
...eagerly watch the overtures to peace progress this summer. Like everyone else here, I excitedly look forward towards a speedy withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, a meeting between Ehud Barak and Syrian President Hafez Assad and the declaration of a Palestinian state. But this excitement is tempered by the reality of the abject living conditions, which will probably prove the biggest obstacle to any real peace, especially in the hearts and minds of the people...
...concerned, it?s an Israeli issue. Arafat, too, is under immense pressure from within his own ranks to deliver on the promises of the peace process." Adding to Arafat's problems is that Palestinian concerns are of diminishing importance among Arab leaders, such as Syria's Hafez al-Assad, most of whom are eager to cement a long-term regional peace. That, and President Clinton?s coaxing, may eventually force Arafat to accept Barak?s terms. But it won?t placate the mounting impatience on the Palestinian streets...