Word: assad
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...summons came down from Damascus last August, informing Rafiq Hariri, then the Prime Minister of Lebanon, that he was wanted for a meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad. For years Hariri had strived to maintain cordial relations with Lebanon's more powerful neighbor, acquiescing to Syria's domination of Lebanese politics as the price of Syria's role in ending Lebanon's 15-year civil war. But by last summer Assad suspected that Hariri was behind an international campaign to end Syria's occupation of Lebanon, and so he decided to warn Hariri not to oppose Syrian plans to reassert...
...killed Rafiq Hariri? Barring a confession from the conspirators, the world may never know the full truth. But interviews with the participants in the drama reveal the immense pressure under which Hariri lived out his final months. His encounter with Assad last August set off a six-month showdown that pit Hariri against one of the most ruthless regimes in the Middle East, which had concluded it could no longer tolerate his defiance. In the end, that defiance may have cost Hariri his life. But it also gave his countrymen-and, perhaps, the region-a chance for a different future...
...August meeting in Damascus was a confrontation between two men with vastly different resumes, styles and visions. Hariri, 60 at the time of his death, was a gregarious, self-made billionaire with friends from Paris to the Persian Gulf. Assad, an ophthalmologist, now 39, had inherited the presidency after the death of his father Hafez in 2000. Hariri had tried to court the younger Assad, but by last summer the two men were on a collision course. First Assad ordered Hariri to support a change to Lebanon's constitution that would extend the tenure of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud...
...adviser. Hariri jokingly asked Jumblatt, "Who will be assassinated first, you or me?" Still, he shrugged off warnings that he might be killed, claiming to have U.S., French and Saudi assurances for his safety. On Feb. 10, Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. envoy overseeing Resolution 1559's implementation, met Assad in Damascus. According to people familiar with the conversation, Assad was preoccupied with Hariri's brazenness. "There is no opposition," Assad told Roed-Larsen, according to a Hariri aide. "There is only Rafiq Hariri." The next day, Roed-Larsen dined with Hariri in Beirut. Hariri informed Fleihan that Roed-Larsen...
...Abdullah. Syria severed diplomatic relations with Jordan in 1980, and the situation became even more strained after Jordan's Hussein put together his Feb. 11 agreement with P.L.O. Leader Arafat to reach a negotiated Middle East settlement with Israel. The signs of rapprochement between Hussein and Syrian President Hafez Assad raised the long-term possibility of an even more broadly based regional peace...