Word: damascus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...chances for a disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel. Only a few days after those tragedies, however, the U.S. Secretary of State reported "substantial agreement in form and content" as talks went on. But nailing down that agreement, in a stepped-up round of shuttle flights between Jerusalem and Damascus, proved to be an exhausting and frustrating chore. The sides were closer, but there was still a gap that Kissinger himself had to find a way to settle...
...late afternoon, we were back at Damascus' airport. Weary from yet another conference with Syrian President Assad, Henry Kissinger told the crowding local press that there had been progress but no agreement. Then he flew off to Jerusalem to try once again to reason the two sides into not shooting at each other...
...taken several hours for the Israelis to round up the prisoners to be released, since they were being held in ten different jails. There was also a problem in trying to get a United Nations plane from Cairo that would ferry the prisoners from Ben-Gurion Airport to Damascus. Compounding the confusion was the fedayeen's complicated plan for effecting the release of the prisoners they sought. The prisoners and half the hostages were to be flown to Damascus. There, a code word (Al Aqsa, from the famous mosque of Jerusalem) would be given to the French ambassador to Syria...
...Middle East massacres was their effect on Henry Kissinger's peace mission. Rather than aborting the talks, stark terror apparently convinced the negotiators that they should work more earnestly. During his most recent round of shuttle diplomacy, the Secretary of State flew seven times round trip between Jerusalem and Damascus. At week's end he was scheduled to drop in on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo and then return to Washington. But then, as both sides appeared ready to agree to a line on which they would disengage, he postponed his trip home and stayed on to work...
Until last week, some Kissinger aides said, Syrian negotiators had spent their time vetoing Israeli proposals. But in the final stages of the latest Damascus-Jerusalem shuttle, they made a few tentative proposals of their own. One was for either Syrian or Syrian-U.N. administration of all of Quneitra. Equally important, Damascus agreed to accept a U.S.-Soviet guarantee that Israel would eventually pull back from all captured Syrian territory rather than insist that Israel make a politically awkward public pledge to do so. The pull back, however, had to be the first item on the agenda...