Word: assad
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...Israel-Syria peace deal is now unlikely to come on Bill Clinton's watch, perhaps not even on President Hafez Assad's. President Clinton left empty-handed from a Geneva encounter with the Syrian leader Sunday, in which he'd hoped he could jump-start a new round of Israel-Syria talks. The President, like many who've tried before, found that the disagreement over the extent of Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights remains too fundamental to allow any movement. And while the two neighbors have for 26 years managed to avoid a war despite the absence of such...
Israel - and the U.S. - had hoped to conclude a land-for-peace deal with Syria before the ailing, 71-year-old Assad leaves office, for fear that a successor may lack the strongman's authority to make security concessions to the Jewish state in exchange for the return of captured territory. But Sunday's failure to secure any agreement means that it might well be left to Syria's next leader to chart the way to peace with Israel. Chances of an early breakthrough may be diminished by Israel's Lebanon withdrawal - which deprives Syria, with its substantial military control...
...Israel is willing to discuss the withdrawal from the Golan Heights, taken from Syria in 1967, and is now leaving the area of Lebanon bordering Syria; it is Syria's turn to make concessions for peace. Yesterday's announcement of a shake-up within the Syrian government--President Hafez Assad fired his entire Cabinet--will hopefully be a step toward a more conciliatory Syrian attitude. In economic terms and within the diplomatic community, it seems Syria may not have a choice: it, like Jordan, needs ties to Israel's economy and technology, and peace may just be a matter...
Your move, Mr. Assad. Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak threw down the gauntlet to his Syrian counterpart Sunday, in the form of a cabinet decision to withdraw from south Lebanon by July irrespective of the state of peace negotiations with Syria. And that leaves the Syrian president no easy response on the strategic chessboard of the Mideast's most troubled relationship. "The last thing the Syrians want is a unilateral Israeli withdrawal in Lebanon," says TIME Middle East bureau chief Scott MacLeod, "because that would deprive them of one of their most important cards in negotiations with Israel - Syria...
...Assad's dilemma is complicated by the fact that the Hezbollah guerrillas who have made occupation of south Lebanon untenable for Israel, far from content to be seen as pawns of Damascus, have their own agenda at odds with Syria's. "While Syria wants to negotiate Israeli withdrawal as part of a package that includes the Golan Heights, Hezbollah would prefer a unilateral withdrawal that would allow them to proclaim themselves the first army ever to have liberated Arab territory from Israeli control," says MacLeod. "But despite a potential conflict with Syria, Hezbollah's enjoying a surge of support throughout...