Word: berrie
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that influence last month when Lebanese Muslim leaders, meeting in Damascus, drew up a 16-point plan that would increase their political power. Lebanese Christian politicians predictably denounced the Damascus accord, and new bickering broke out between them and Druze Chieftain Walid Jumblatt and Shi'ite Amal Leader Nabih Berri. On Aug. 14 a car bomb exploded in a northern Christian enclave. Three days later an even bigger explosive device killed 55 in a suburb of predominantly Christian East Beirut. The Christian radio station Voice of Lebanon blamed the Muslims and promised, "Our revenge will be as powerful as their...
...bombings touched off the worst artillery barrages that Beirut has seen in more than a year. More than 15,000 rounds rained down on both sides of the "green line" that divides the capital into Christian and Muslim sectors. Berri spent a day huddled in the underground bunker that he used for interviews during the TWA hostage crisis in June...
...session. The President asked for a full range of options. "From the beginning," says a senior adviser, "he approved of the concept of using everything on the menu." McFarlane briefed the group on the goals of various Lebanese Shi'ite factions, focusing his attention on the Amal's Nabih Berri as the U.S.'s best...
Reagan approved this approach and told McFarlane, who knew Berri from his % days as a special Middle East envoy in 1983, to use this relationship to put pressure on the Amal leader. In the middle of the night, from his suburban Maryland home, McFarlane spoke with Berri. During the 30-minute conversation, he passed along the message that had been worked out at the NSC meeting. Washington would not join in arrangements to free Israel's 776 Lebanese prisoners while Americans were being held, McFarlane told Berri. "The thrust was to get across to Berri that the Shi'ite prisoners...
Despite Shultz's statement, that was never a very real hope. Apparently, neither Nabih Berri, leader of the Amal militia then holding the 39 TWA hostages, nor Syrian President Hafez Assad was able to deliver the seven. "They didn't have access to them," said one U.S. official last week. It also became clear to Washington that if the President insisted on the release of all 46, it would not even get the TWA 39. Said one U.S. official ruefully: "Sometimes policymakers have to decide on the greatest good for the greatest number...