Word: assad
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...under way in Syria, and with it could come the best chance for regional peace since Israel was founded 51 years ago. That may not be the way it looks from Washington, where officials are struggling to get the two sides just to sit down together. Yet inside Syria, Assad, 69, ailing with heart disease, diabetes and prostate problems, appears increasingly anxious to ensure Bashar's position and with it the Assad legacy. And to make that happen, Assad seems in more of a hurry to make a deal to regain the Golan Heights from Israel than...
...there is a clue to the future of Middle East peace, it may be in the fresher look that President Hafez Assad's defiant old regime is sporting these days. Almost gone are the giant Orwellian portraits of the Syrian leader that once seemed to loom over every traffic intersection. Instead, less threatening pictures of Assad's son and heir apparent Bashar, 34, decorate billboards and shopwindows from the Damascus suq to the Mediterranean coast. The favorite depicts Assad in an almost holy trinity with Bashar and Basil, Assad's idealized eldest boy and chosen successor until his car-crash...
...encouraging sign is that Assad, whose country remains on the State Department's list of terrorist states, is promoting his son as the sort of Syrian leader with whom the world, Israel included, will be able to do business. Bashar talks the language of economics rather than politics, and, until his brother's death, had chosen a career in ophthalmology rather than following his father's path into the army and power...
Those questions also seem to be haunting Assad Sr. Although he is anxious not to appear in haste, many diplomats are convinced that Assad is determined not to miss the new opportunity for talks that arose with the election of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in May. In Syria's earlier rounds of negotiations, Assad moved cautiously, only to react bitterly to the deadlock that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the subsequent defeat of Rabin's moderate successor Shimon Peres by hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu. Assad is also more focused on Syria's inevitable political transition...
Another impetus is the ticking of the American political clock. U.S. officials say Assad believes President Clinton can help him get Syria's best deal with Israel. He knows, they add, that otherwise Syria will have to wait for a new U.S. President. Assad's aim is to enhance Syria's long-term stability by achieving a "cold peace" with Israel. His hope is to go down in history both as a peacemaker and as the Arab struggler who remained steadfast long after the Sadats, the Husseins and the Arafats did separate deals behind his back. He can portray...