Word: damascus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more than a decade, Syria's President Hafez Assad has insisted that the road to peace in the Middle East must pass through Damascus. At least two such detours through the Syrian capital have just taken place. On Dec. 28, the warlords of Lebanon's feuding militias assembled in Damascus to sign a Syrian-brokered agreement designed to end almost eleven years of civil war. Last week Assad's image was burnished further when Jordan's King Hussein traveled to Syria for the first time in six years...
...went into effect gunmen opened fire on the car of Assad Shaftari, a key Maronite participant in the Syrian-sponsored peace talks. Shaftari narrowly escaped. His supporters have accused Christians who back President Amin Gemayel of staging the attack. Gemayel, who has yet to endorse the treaty, flew to Damascus at week's end to discuss the pact with Assad. --By Jill Smolowe...
...issue were the terms of the treaty signed in Damascus on Dec. 28, which would have granted additional political clout to Lebanon's Muslim majority while curbing the influence of the Christians. Since 1943, when Lebanon won independence from France, an unwritten agreement has required that the President be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament a Shi'ite Muslim. The December accord gave the Muslims greater representation in the executive and the legislative branches. President Amin Gemayel at first praised the plan, but he quickly changed his mind when fellow Christian leaders...
Hobeika's army cornered the Phalange units in an area northeast of the capital. Then at dawn Wednesday, Hobeika's chief of staff, Samir Geagea, 32, who opposed the Damascus treaty, threw his tanks and artillery behind Gemayel and launched a counteroffensive against Hobeika. At the end of the day, according to police estimates, 350 people had been killed...
...confused. In an interview with Washington columnists, President Reagan seemed to indicate that the U.S. was ready to strike against those countries if it had evidence tying them to terrorist acts. In fact, evidence gathered by British officials in the thwarted El Al bombing has pointed toward Syrian involvement. Damascus, however, maintains a mutual friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, which means that an attack on Syria could result in a superpower face-off. Though Administration officials later insisted that Reagan's remark had been misinterpreted , their statements left the impression that the U.S. had one standard for Libyan terrorism...