Word: assad
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Syrian President Bashar Assad had planned to attend the 2005 World Summit at the U.N. last week as part of a novel policy, in the words of a Syrian diplomat, of "dealing with international affairs and contacting world leaders." But without a word of explanation, Assad nixed his New York City trip. Diplomatic sources tell TIME that he failed in his attempts to arrange tête-à-têtes with the Presidents of Russia and Turkey. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also pointedly left Assad out of a meeting with European and other Middle Eastern leaders. (The only one willing to meet...
...Starting in November 2003, tribal sheiks and Baathist expatriates held a series of monthly meetings at the Cham Palace hotel in Damascus. They were public events, supposedly meetings to express solidarity with the Iraqi opposition to the U.S. occupation. (The January 2004 gathering was attended by Syrian President Bashar Assad.) Behind the scenes, however, the meetings provided a convenient cover for leaders of the insurgency, including Muhammad Yunis al-Ahmed, the former Military Bureau director, to meet, plan and distribute money. A senior military officer told TIME that U.S. intelligence had an informant--a mid-level Baathist official who belonged...
...four people involved in the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco, refused to address the widespread Lebanese suspicion that Hariri's murder was ordered by the Syrian regime. Mehlis said, however: "We do think more people were involved." Last week, the U.S. State Department demanded that Syrian President Bashar Assad cooperate with the U.N. investigation, which thus far has been prevented from interrogating up to 15 senior Syrian officials. On Saturday, a Syrian official said that Damascus was ready to receive Mehlis, although a date has yet to be set. But even with such promises, Lebanese critics of Syria said...
...passion for hegemony lives on in Damascus. Under the shrewd, ruthless, brutally dictatorial guidance of President Hafez Assad, 53, Syria has been making a bid for the past decade to grasp the torch of Arab unity and emerge as the pre-eminent power in the Middle East. By keeping its 62,000 troops in Lebanon ... Syria has become the key player in that fractured country's future ... Syrians consider Lebanon to be part of 'Greater Syria,' a vague concept of territorial grandeur that thrives more in memory than in reality. Indeed, the two countries share more than a millennium...
Despite frequent accusations in the West--and the Hindawi trial in London--Syria has consistently denied links to international terrorism. President Hafez Assad firmly reiterated that denial in an interview in Damascus with a group of TIME journalists, including Time Inc. Editor in Chief Henry Grunwald, Assistant Managing Editor Richard Duncan, International Editor Karsten Prager and Middle East Bureau Chief Dean Fischer. Assad not only rejected allegations of a Syrian terror connection but as usual accused Israel of terrorist activity and of being responsible for Middle East tensions in general. Though he offered no evidence, Assad broached his own elaborate...