Word: assads
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...Chernenko appearances evidently designed to dispel speculation that the leader's health is failing and that his nation is suffering a leadership vacuum. A few days after signing a friendship treaty in Moscow with President Ali Abdullah Saleh of North Yemen, Chernenko last week received Syrian President Hafez Assad in the Kremlin. Hungarian Communist Leader Janos Kadar, on a visit to Paris last week, insisted that all is well in the Moscow hierarchy. Said he: "It is a stable leadership, and the continuity of its leadership is the mark of its stability...
...Syrian President Hafez Assad visited Moscow last week, his Chief of Staff, Major General Hikmat Shehabi, declared that Syria was prepared to dispatch thousands of volunteers to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Thereafter, the Israelis let it be known that they might not leave the areas in which they face Syrian forces after all. That was an apparent effort to press the Syrians to make some tangible concessions on the security question...
...tour. U.S. officials readily admitted that Murphy had no specific plan when he began his hopscotch around the Arab capitals. But Murphy was a good choice to send on a side trip to Damascus: as U.S. Ambassador to Syria from 1974 to 1978, he developed a personal friendship with Assad. The two men talked for more than two hours before Murphy flew to Jerusalem, where he conferred with Peres for an hour. After seeing Mubarak in Cairo and lunching with Hussein in Amman, Murphy returned to Damascus on Friday. He met with Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, Assad...
Murphy's return to Syria suggested to some that Assad might be amenable to a U.S.-brokered Israeli withdrawal. It has generally been assumed that Syria felt it had nothing to lose in seeing Israel mired in Lebanon. Some Western diplomats in Damascus contend, however, that Assad now fears that the growing violence against the Israelis in southern Lebanon may trigger a retaliatory attack by Israel against Syrian troops. These diplomats do not believe that Damascus has dropped its demand that Jerusalem unilaterally withdraw its soldiers and disband the Israeli-supplied Lebanese militia that helps patrol the region. Syria...
Nothing is likely to be settled soon. Assad has proved himself a master of the waiting game, stretching out talks before deciding not to decide. Murphy is in a position to test the wisdom of a statement he made last July that Syria had played a "helpful role" in the northern part of Lebanon. Whether that judgment applies to the south of the country depends on how much sympathy Assad shows toward Israeli concerns, and vice versa. -By James Kelly...