Word: assad
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...multiparty presidential elections? Was it the popular demonstrations in Beirut two days later that finally forced the resignation of the Syrian-backed Prime Minister and his Cabinet? Or did the start of something momentous come on Thursday, when Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah welcomed Syria's President Bashar Assad to Riyadh and not only told Assad to get Syria's 14,000 troops out of Lebanon but also announced to the world that he had said...
...also right to remember that progress in the Middle East invariably moves a few steps forward--then a few steps back. Even as thousands of Lebanese gathered in Beirut's Martyrs' Square on Saturday to call on Syria to end its occupation, thousands of Syrians cheered Assad as he told his parliament that he would make only a partial pullback of Syrian forces. "Bush, Bush, listen. The Syrian people will not bow!" chanted the crowd...
...Syria's troubles multiplied when Europe, led by France, and then Russia, Saudi Arabia and Egypt piled on too. It fell to Assad to play out his poor hand. Under its family dynasty, Syria has long relied on delay and deceit in dealing with the West. Washington had complained for months that Damascus was harboring Iraqi Baathists who were suspected of stirring up trouble in Iraq--which Assad always denied. Then 30 former Saddam Hussein henchmen were mysteriously arrested by Iraq. After the group proved to include Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, a half-brother of Saddam...
...Labwani wanted me to ask Assad why he had been imprisoned. "I didn't throw him in jail," Assad told me. "I don't do everything in this country." It was an admission his father never would have made. The President's body language was more ophthalmologist than dictator. He sat hunched deep in a black leather couch. There was no physical sense of power or menace to the man, no sociopathic cool, just consternation. When I asked him who killed Rafiq Hariri, he seemed stricken: "The most important question is, Who had the benefit...
ABBAS: It's clear-cut. President Assad said he will withdraw. But for us, we don't know yet the consequences. We don't know the demands of the Americans...