Word: damascus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Rice also warned Abbas that the Bush Administration took a dim view of the Palestinian leader's proposed trip to Damascus for a meeting with Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Mashaal in a bid to pacify the near-civil war that has erupted in recent months between militants of Fatah and Hamas. Rice made it clear to Abbas, said one Palestinian source, that "she's worried Hamas will impose its conditions on Abbas...
...much as he knew how to manipulate power in Iraq through propaganda and government-sponsored terror, he was inept at international relations and diplomacy. His enemies abroad were myriad. Certainly, he and Assad's regime in Damascus were not friendly, despite the political genetics that linked their ruling parties. But he was also an enemy of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian cleric who had fled the Shah's persecution and sought refuge in Iraq's holy Shi'a city of Najaf in 1965. Saddam did not make it a comfortable stay and Khomeini moved on to exile in Europe. When...
...American-orchestrated attempt to conduct such an election-monitoring effort could make a dialogue between Washington and Damascus - as proposed by the Iraq Study Group and several U.S. allies - difficult or impossible. The entire proposal could also be a waste of effort; Edward P. Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria who worked on the Iraq Study Group report, says that Syria's opposition is so fractured and weak that there is little to be gained by such a venture. "To fund opposition parties on the margins is a distraction at best," he told TIME. "It will only impede...
...Others detect another goal for the proposed policy. "Ever since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which Syria opposed, the Bush Administration has been looking for ways to squeeze the government in Damascus," notes Joshua Landis, a Syria expert who is co-director of the Center for Peace Studies at the University of Oklahoma. "Syria has appeared to be next on the Administration's agenda to reform the greater Middle East." Landis adds: "This is apparently an effort to gin up the Syrian opposition under the rubric of 'democracy promotion' and 'election monitoring,' but it's really just an attempt...
...either of those countries need to ingratiate themselves with Washington. So the U.S. is not in any position to set preconditions for seeking their help in Iraq. They may even be inclined to set conditions of their own for such cooperation. On the question of talking to Tehran and Damascus, moreover, President Bush certainly has the backing of a number of legislators from both sides of the aisle, who have questioned whether Iran and Syria would have any inclination to help out the U.S. in Iraq. Baker would agree that they're not about to help out just...