Word: assads
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Still on the sidelines in the Middle East peace fest, Syria's President Hafez Assad spurned Clinton and a chance to mend fences with Israel
...candidate Bill Clinton excoriated president George Bush for "coddling" dictators. Now forget about General Raoul Cedras and his golden Panamanian parachute. Consider only that President Clinton last week bestowed one of the highest presidential honors on one of the world's chief thugs, President Hafez Assad of Syria. The usual place for meeting the likes of him is some neutral site like Geneva. (One comes away less soiled that way.) Yet Clinton decided to pay court to Assad in Damascus. It was the first visit by a President to a nation on the U.S. list of terrorist states...
...catalog of Assad's atrocities goes back far, highlighted by the 1982 massacre of 20,000 of his own people in the rebellious town of Hama. But put that aside. Put aside the fact that Damascus is headquarters for a dozen terrorist groups, principal Arab supporter of Iran, controller of Lebanon's Hizballah terrorists (who last month launched rockets into Israel in support of the bus bombing that killed 23 people...
Problem is, it didn't. There is not a shred of evidence, despite the defensive protestations of Administration officials, that Assad moved or that Clinton got anything at all for this investment of American prestige. The only clear return was to Assad, in the coin of international legitimacy and respectability...
Whether he can get very far is uncertain. Israel and Syria are stuck in a who-goes-first? impasse: Assad wants the Israelis locked into a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights before he will say precisely what kind of peace he will make, while Israel wants Assad to commit to full normal relations -- exchange of ambassadors, open borders, trade -- before it defines the extent of its withdrawal. Syrian and Israeli ambassadors have been meeting regularly in Washington, but the main contact between the two sides has been Christopher, who has made five trips to the region since April...