Word: hafez
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...smart enough to leap into a no-lose political situation. If he had not been successful, he would still have been lauded for the attempt by his supporters and any failure could have been blamed on the State Department and Reagan's limited negotiatory stance with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad...
...last week, U.S. Special Envoy Donald Rumsfeld was in Damascus conferring with Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam. Little was accomplished, but the fact that the session was held at all was an achievement of sorts. In the streets of the capital, 50,000 Syrians rallied to praise President Hafez Assad and to demonstrate against U.S. mili military power...
...about who is running the country. Sources ranging from P.L.O. officials to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir have told reporters that a five-man council was making decisions, but hard facts are an elusive commodity in Damascus. Among the men reported to be on the committee are Rifaat Assad, Hafez's younger brother and the tough-hearted head of internal security, Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam and Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas. Even if Assad should die or become seriously incapacitated, sparking a ferocious power struggle, U.S. officials expect little change in Syrian policy once a successor emerges. "Damascus would...
After leading a bloodless coup in 1970, Hafez Assad took over and appeared to be a relative moderate. He signed a disengagement agreement with Israel over the Golan Heights in 1974. He sent his army into Lebanon in 1976 to save the Maronite Christians from defeat by the Palestine Liberation Organization and a coalition of leftist Muslim forces. He told TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn in 1977 that he was ready to make peace with the Israelis if they would withdraw from the territory they had captured in the 1967 war. But in the past three years, as he has fought...
Despite their radically different habits, Rifaat and Hafez Assad share the same political goals. As members of the Alawite branch of Shi'ite Islam, both are determined to preserve the sect's control. The Alawites have dominated Syria for 13 years, mostly because of the adamantine grip of Hafez...