Word: assad
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...INSIDE ASSAD'S MIND...
Syria's President was the linchpin for the peace process and the toughest Arab leader for Washington to persuade. He is also, says William Quandt of the Brookings Institution, "a great realist." When the cold war ended and the Soviet Union fell into disarray, Assad could no longer count on modern weapons and economic support from Moscow, and his dreams of achieving strategic parity with Israel faded...
...During the gulf war, Assad moved closer to Washington and the moderate Arabs by joining the alliance against Iraq. For his efforts, he received major subsidies from Saudi Arabia -- at least $2.5 billion so far -- and a nod of acceptance from the U.S. as he completed his domination of Lebanon and disarmed the rival militias. Whatever threat Lebanon's civil war might have posed to Syrian hegemony is now gone...
...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...