Word: assad
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...break the deadlock, Christopher offered a diplomatic plum to Syrian President Hafez Assad: a meeting with Clinton in Geneva. The mid-January summit, which is expected to bring the Syrians back to Washington's bargaining tables by February, will enable Assad to project the statesmanlike image he craves. And it will also give him a chance to explain to Clinton his reservation about the Arafat-Rabin accord...
Christopher's announcement came in response to a rare display of Syrian goodwill toward Israel. Assad promised to assist investigations into the disappearance of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon during the 1980s, and offered exit permits to 1,200 Syrian Jews by the end of this month. The gestures did not go unnoticed. The very next day, the Administration said it would temporarily relax sanctions against Syria -- imposed for its alleged support of international terrorism -- to allow the transfer of several American-made aircraft from Kuwait...
Cairo -- Syrian President Hafez Assad has been refusing to negotiate the transfer of the Golan Heights from Israel to Syria until the U.N. lifts sanctions against Iraq. Saddam Hussein is Assad's sworn enemy, but Assad feels a growing isolation from his neighbors -- Iran, Turkey and Iraq -- and so is doing Iraq this favor. The Clinton Administration wants a Syrian-Israeli agreement on the Golan by the end of this year, and has initiated secret talks with Iraqi officials at the U.N. aimed at lifting the sanctions...
Damascus -- Syrian President HAFEZ ASSAD is watching events in Moscow closely. According to a Syrian insider, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and would-be President Alexander Rutskoi sent conflicting signals to a Syrian delegation that visited Russia to discuss the Middle East not long before last week's crisis in Moscow. "Rutskoi talked like the old communist leaders," says the insider. "He told the Syrians to 'stand up to imperialist aggression' and promised 'the Russians will back you.' But Yeltsin's people told the Syrians to do what the Americans told them...
Syria is a harder case. President Hafez Assad is not eager to be seen as following Arafat's lead, and he believes the P.L.O.'s settling for a staged autonomy threatens his own ambition for a one-step return of the Golan Heights to Syrian control. Washington will have to stroke Assad, knowing that Israel needs time to digest the latest events before ceding territory to Syria, no matter the peace that would be its price. In Clinton's favor is the fact that Assad can no longer count on Moscow to support his pan-Arab dream and Syria...