Word: assad
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DIED. HAFEZ ASSAD, 69, President of Syria who held an iron grip on power for three decades; of heart failure; in Damascus (see World...
From Washington to Jerusalem there is hope that Assad's all-but-certain successor, his son Bashar, might display at least a tad more flexibility than his father. But it seems likely that Bashar's first task will be to consolidate his power. The same weeping parliamentarians who mourned Assad pere found time on Saturday to lower the minimum age for the country's ruler from 40 to 34, not coincidentally Bashar's age. But now that he's legal to rule, Bashar will still face a blistering few months of on-the-job training. Among his key tasks will...
...Arab world, there was sadness--not on the order of the death of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the great Egyptian leader and pan-Arabist--but melancholy. Coming soon after the death of Jordan's King Hussein, Assad's passing marked a changing of the guard--and, perhaps, new volatility--in the region as leaders like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak (71), Yasser Arafat (71) and Saudi Arabia's King Fahd (79) grow...
Israeli and American officials had known for some time that Assad was ill. But the suddenness with which he died surprised nearly everyone, including Israeli intelligence. In northern Virginia, the reports of Assad's death came into CIA headquarters early Saturday morning. The agency's operatives in Damascus were reporting that top Syrian and Baath Party officials were spotted rushing to the presidential palace on a hilltop overlooking the capital city. By early morning Washington time, officials at the U.S. embassy in Damascus, who were working their own sources, had what they believed was solid confirmation that Assad was dead...
With Hafez Assad's death, the spotlight turns to his son Bashar, 34, a mild-mannered ophthalmologist and perhaps the most unlikely political heir among the new generation of Arab leaders who have started assuming power in the Middle East. Indeed, Bashar's older brother Basil, a daring, charismatic figure, had been favored to follow in their father's footsteps until he was killed in a traffic accident...