Word: damascus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Rafiq Hariri was a bold, self-made billionaire but a prudent politician. Syrian troops occupied his country and bossed its politics, yet during two terms as Lebanon's dynamic Prime Minister, he was careful never to oppose Syria head on. When he was summoned to Damascus last summer to endorse changes in his country's constitution that would allow Lebanon's Syria-controlled puppet President to remain in power, he bowed to the demand despite his strong opposition. When he returned to Beirut with his arm in a white sling, wags joked that he had undergone a painful arm twisting...
...armor-plated convoy, killing him and 14 others. As the blast showered the pavement with broken glass and sent a column of black smoke into the sky, suspicion quickly focused on the country that has used political assassination to maintain its dominion over Lebanon for three decades: Syria. Though Damascus denied involvement, anti-Syrian emotions were unleashed in the streets of Beirut, where tens of thousands of mourners from across Lebanon's political spectrum turned Hariri's funeral into a freedom march, demanding an end to Syria's occupation of Lebanon...
Even before the hit on Hariri, U.S. patience with Damascus was dwindling. Syria's support for militant groups that oppose Israel, as well as its close alliance with Iran, has long been an irritant to Washington. But reports of Syrian meddling in Iraq have provoked the most rage. For a time, U.S. diplomats thought they were making headway in persuading Damascus to crack down on the money and manpower the Bush Administration charges is flowing across Syria's border to insurgents in Iraq. But a Pentagon official told TIME that the U.S. believes Syrian military officers went to Fallujah...
...calculated that killing Hariri would send a message of that Syria was the indispensable guarantor of peace, that would have been a dangerous miscalculation - a panicky response to mounting pressure to leave Lebanon to the Lebanese. If anything, now, that pressure is likely to grow. But the government in Damascus, or some elements of it, may well be feeling cause for panic. Syria is isolated diplomatically and under fire from the Bush administration, which accuses Damascus of doing too little to curb the flow of men and money to insurgents in Iraq, and demands an end to Syria's backing...
...reportedly been directly warned by both France and the U.S. in recent weeks to refrain from intervening in Lebanese politics in the run-up to May's elections. Now, it has become the focus of discussion in response to the Hariri killing at the UN Security Council. If Damascus had no hand in the assassination of Rafik Hariri, then it has an overwhelming interest in finding the real killer as soon as possible...